Artificial intelligence and dogs ...

What has artificial intelligence to do with dogs?

I can remember times when we were told the human being is the only intelligent lifeform on earth.
Yes, a lifeform that has fun killing and torturing each other was defined as the only intelligent living creature on this planet.
There were, of course, always good reasons for this behavior: money, beliefs, resources, etc.

Ok - but that's not what I wanted to write about ...

During the last years more and more animals were upgraded to have some kind of intelligence: dolphins, chimpanzee and more.

What is intelligence?

Intelligence has been defined in many different ways including the capacity for logic, understanding, self-awareness, learning, emotional knowledge, reasoning, planning, creativity, and problem solving. It can be more generally described as the ability to perceive or infer information, and to retain it as knowledge to be applied towards adaptive behaviors within an environment or context.

Intelligence is most widely studied in humans but has also been observed in both non-human animals and in plants. Intelligence in machines is called artificial intelligence, which is commonly implemented in computer systems using program software.

Source Wikipedia

For myself I use a simple definition:

If "it" can think more than two steps ahead, it is intelligent.

Example: standing at the edge of the roof on a ten storey building and thinking "if I go one step forward, I'll fall down." is not intelligent, because these are only two steps. Thinking also about the person who needs to clean up the mess, the (formally) loved ones and "will the sidewalk be damaged?" is starting to show some kind of intelligence.

Now scientists use dogs to train AI systems

A dog called "Kelp" had sensors attached and 380 videos were made. The videos together with the movement data ware the base to teach the AI system. The process is described in this whitepaper.
After learning the AI system reacted like the dog on e.g. a ball: fetch and bring.
In an interview with The Verge one scientist described exactly what I mentioned above about the "more than 2 step ahead thinking" theory. If the AI system sees a stairway it wants to go upstairs but has no idea what happens next. This makes - following my own simple definition - this AI system not intelligent but dogs in my opinion dogs for sure are intelligent.

But who am I to judge about scientists and their work 😇.

What do you think about AI?

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