Building Artificial Animals

Alan Turing first proposed the idea of a "Child Machine," with the premise that an intelligent machine would not be turned on and immediately be intelligent , but would learn as do children. The desire to learn would be programmed, but the knowledge contained with the machine would be learned over time.

Others have proposed that building artificial animals is the right approach. Could we build an artificial insect, for example, that could mimic the behavior and learning abilities of the physical insect? This is a much smaller step than building an artificial human, but it's very likely that the lessons learned along the way will help us in this endeavor.

The logical progression of artificial insects , animals, and humans are their physical embodiments in robots. This will require innovations in the development and construction of micro sensors and actuators in addition to software-based cognitive structures that permit unbounded learning.