Modern data on brain function do not support the classical explanation of helplessness in infants. New research shows that babies’ brains are not as mature as previously thought; instead, they use postpartum periods of “desperation” to develop basic models similar to those that drive generative AI.
The study, led by a neuroscientist from Trinity College Dublin, was recently published in the journal. Trends in Cognitive Sciencefound for the first time that the classical explanation for infant helplessness was not supported by modern brain data.
Compared to many animals, humans are helpless for a long time after birth. Many animals, such as horses and chickens, can walk on their day of birth. This long period of helplessness exposes human infants to danger and places a great burden on the parents, but surprisingly they have withstood the evolutionary pressure.
Interspecies research articles
“Since the 1960s, scientists have believed that the helplessness exhibited by human babies is due to limitations at birth. It was believed that babies with large heads were born prematurely, leading to brain immaturity and a helpless period lasting up to a year. Why do human babies have such a long period of time?” “We wanted to find out who was helpless throughout,” explains Professor Rhodri Cusack, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience and lead author of the paper.
The research team includes Professor Cusack, who measures brain and mental development in babies using neuroimaging; Prof. Christine Charvet from Auburn University, USA, who compares brain development across species; and Dr. Marc’Aurelio Ranzato, Senior Artificial Intelligence Researcher at DeepMind.
“Our study compared brain development in different animal species. It was based on a long-term project Translation Time“This suggests that by equating the relative ages of different species, the human brain is more mature at birth than many other species,” says Professor Charvet.
The researchers used brain imaging and found that many systems in the baby’s brain were already functioning and processing a rich stream of information from the senses. This contradicts the long-held belief that many systems in the baby’s brain were too immature to function. The team then compared the training in humans to state-of-the-art machine learning models, in which deep neural networks benefit from a “desperate” pre-training period.
In the past, AI models were trained directly to perform the required tasks, such as teaching a self-driving car to recognize what it sees on the road. But now, models are first pre-trained to see patterns in large amounts of data before they perform any major tasks. The resulting base model is then used to study specific tasks. This has been found to ultimately lead to faster learning of new tasks and better performance.
Implications for the future development of artificial intelligence
“We propose that human infants similarly use the ‘helpless’ period in infancy for pre-training, learning powerful underlying patterns that continue to support cognition later in life with high efficiency and rapid generalisation. This is very similar to the powerful machine learning models such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Google’s Gemini that have led to major breakthroughs in generative AI in recent years,” explained Professor Cusack.
Researchers say future research into how children learn could inspire the next generation of artificial intelligence models.
“Although there have been major breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, basic models consume enormous amounts of energy and require much more data than children. Understanding how children learn could inspire the next generation of artificial intelligence models. “The next step of the research will be the direct comparison of learning in the brain and artificial intelligence,” he said.
Source: Port Altele
