Introduction to Associative Learning
The work of psychologist Robert Rescorla in the 1970s and 1980s has influenced many, including psychologists Ed Wasserman and Sutton. Rescorla encouraged people to think of association not as a low-level mechanical process, but as the learning that results from exposure to relations among events in the environment. This concept is a primary means by which an organism represents the structure of its world.
Learning in Laboratory Settings
This idea is true even for a laboratory pigeon pecking at screens and buttons in a small experimental box. Scientists carefully control and measure stimuli and rewards in these settings. However, the pigeon’s learning extends outside the box. Experienced pigeons jump immediately into buckets whenever students open the doors to transport them between the aviary and the laboratory. They are learning the structure of their world inside the laboratory and the relation of its parts, even though they do not always know the specific task they will face inside.
The Question of Sentience
Comparative psychologists and animal researchers have long grappled with a question that suddenly seems urgent because of AI: How do we attribute sentience to other living beings? The same associative mechanisms through which the pigeon learns the structure of its world can open a window to the kind of inner life that earlier psychologists said did not exist.
Pigeons and Introspection
Pharmaceutical researchers have long used pigeons in drug-discrimination tasks, where they’re given a drug and rewarded with a food pellet for correctly identifying which drug they took. The birds’ success suggests they both experience and discriminate between internal states. This ability is similar to introspection. It is hard to imagine AI matching a pigeon on this specific task—a reminder that, though AI and animals share associative mechanisms, there is more to life than behavior and learning.
The Difference Between AI and Animals
A pigeon deserves ethical consideration as a living creature not because of how it learns but because of what it feels. A pigeon can experience pain and suffer, while an AI chatbot cannot—even if some large language models can trick people into believing otherwise. Psychologist Ed Wasserman trained pigeons to detect cancerous tissue and symptoms of heart disease in medical scans as accurately as experienced physicians.
Understanding AI Sentience Through Animal Cognition
The intensive public and private investments into AI research have resulted in technologies that are forcing us to confront the question of AI sentience today. To answer these questions, we need a similar degree of investment into research on animal cognition and behavior. Comparative psychologists and animal researchers have long grappled with questions that suddenly seem urgent because of AI: How do we attribute sentience to other living beings? How can we distinguish true sentience from a very convincing performance of sentience?
Human Learning and Association
Such an undertaking would yield knowledge not only about technology and animals but also about ourselves. Most psychologists probably wouldn’t go as far as arguing that reward is enough to explain most human behavior, but no one would dispute that people often learn by association too. In fact, most of Wasserman’s undergraduate students eventually succeeded at his recent experiment with the striped discs, but only after they gave up searching for rules. They resorted, like the pigeons, to association and couldn’t easily explain afterwards what they’d learned.
The Irony of Associative Learning
It is another irony about associative learning: What has long been considered the most complex form of intelligence—a cognitive ability like rule-based learning—may make us human, but we also call on it for the easiest of tasks. Meanwhile, some of the most refined demonstrations of human learning—like a sommelier learning to taste the difference between grapes—are learned not through rules, but only through experience.
Conclusion
Learning through experience relies on ancient associative mechanisms that we share with pigeons and countless other creatures. The laboratory pigeon is not only in our computers but in our brains—and the engine behind some of humankind’s most impressive feats. By understanding how animals learn and attribute sentience, we can gain insights into the complexities of human learning and the nature of intelligence itself.
FAQs
- Q: What is associative learning?
A: Associative learning is the process by which an organism learns the relationships between events in its environment. - Q: How do pigeons demonstrate associative learning?
A: Pigeons demonstrate associative learning by learning the structure of their world, including the relation between stimuli and rewards, and by discriminating between internal states in drug-discrimination tasks. - Q: What is the difference between AI and animal sentience?
A: Animals, unlike AI, can experience pain, suffer, and have internal states, making them deserving of ethical consideration. - Q: Why is it important to study animal cognition and behavior in the context of AI?
A: Studying animal cognition and behavior can help us understand how to attribute sentience to other living beings and distinguish true sentience from a convincing performance of sentience, which is crucial for the development of AI.
