Absolutely brilliant stuff Jacob! As usual with your posts, I’ll have to ponder this for a while...Let’s see if I got this right:
Evolution had to solve alignment: how to align the powerful general learning engine of the newbrain (neocortex etc) with the goals of the oldbrain (“reptilian brain”).
Some (most?) of this alignment seems to be a form of inverse reinforcement learning. Another form of alignment that the oldbrain applies to the newbrain is imprinting. It is Evolution’s way of solving the pointing problem.
When a duckling hatches it imprints on the first agent it sees. This feels different from inverse reinforcement learning: it’s not like the newbrain is rewarded or punished, rather it is more like there is an open slot for your mom
But I would say that imprinting is a specific instance of a more general process (which I called correlation guided proxy matching). The oldbrain has a simple initial mom detector circuit, which during normal chick learning phase is just good enough to locate and connect to the learned newbrain mom detector circuit, which then replaces/supplants the oldbrain equivalent. The proxy matching needn’t really effect the newbrain directly.
Absolutely brilliant stuff Jacob! As usual with your posts, I’ll have to ponder this for a while...Let’s see if I got this right:
Evolution had to solve alignment: how to align the powerful general learning engine of the newbrain (neocortex etc) with the goals of the oldbrain (“reptilian brain”).
Some (most?) of this alignment seems to be a form of inverse reinforcement learning. Another form of alignment that the oldbrain applies to the newbrain is imprinting. It is Evolution’s way of solving the pointing problem.
When a duckling hatches it imprints on the first agent it sees. This feels different from inverse reinforcement learning: it’s not like the newbrain is rewarded or punished, rather it is more like there is an open slot for your mom
Thanks! - that summary seems about right.
But I would say that imprinting is a specific instance of a more general process (which I called correlation guided proxy matching). The oldbrain has a simple initial mom detector circuit, which during normal chick learning phase is just good enough to locate and connect to the learned newbrain mom detector circuit, which then replaces/supplants the oldbrain equivalent. The proxy matching needn’t really effect the newbrain directly.