5.A 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 cabinet, you can challenge a chimpanzee in a memory task and two artificial intelligences in the videogame Snake. The clues we gather here—about memory and learning—will help us take a few more steps forward in our investigation into intelligence.