4.0 Introduction

Imagine a puppy: it has never seen the world, never explored it, never tried walking or barking — and it shows. It moves clumsily, unsure of what to do. It’s mostly through experience — through trial and error — that the puppy learns.

According to Donald Griffin, an American zoologist and ethologist, animal intelligence is not just the ability to have experiences, but also to acquire, store, and use what has been learned to adapt behaviour depending on the situation.

But if an animal can learn — what about artificial intelligence? How does a machine learn?

In this room, you’ll be able to challenge a chimpanzee in a memory game and compete with an artificial intelligence in a game of Snake.

And then perhaps you’ll ask yourself: where do memory and learning fit on our investigator’s board?