{"id":120782,"date":"2023-05-23T17:00:29","date_gmt":"2023-05-23T21:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=120782"},"modified":"2023-05-24T05:28:59","modified_gmt":"2023-05-24T09:28:59","slug":"researchers-uncover-striking-parallels-in-the-ways-that-humans-and-machine-learning-models-acquire-language-skills","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=120782","title":{"rendered":"(Quanta Magazine) Researchers uncover striking parallels in the ways that humans and machine learning models acquire language skills"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>How do brains learn? It\u2019s a mystery, one that applies both to the spongy organs in our skulls and to their digital counterparts in our machines. Even though artificial neural networks (ANNs) are built from elaborate webs of artificial neurons, ostensibly mimicking the way our brains process information, we don\u2019t know if they process input in similar ways.\u00a0 <span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere\u2019s been a long-standing debate as to whether neural networks learn in the same way that humans do,\u201d said\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/pages.uoregon.edu\/vkapatsi\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Vsevolod Kapatsinski<\/a>, a linguist at the University of Oregon.<\/p>\n<p>Now, a study\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41598-023-33384-9\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">published<\/a>\u00a0last month suggests that natural and artificial networks learn in similar ways, at least when it comes to language. The researchers \u2014 led by\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/vcresearch.berkeley.edu\/faculty\/gasper-begus\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Ga\u0161per Begu\u0161<\/a>, a computational linguist at the University of California, Berkeley \u2014 compared the brain waves of humans listening to a simple sound to the signal produced by a neural network analyzing the same sound. The results were uncannily alike. \u201cTo our knowledge,\u201d Begu\u0161 and his colleagues wrote, the observed responses to the same stimulus \u201care the most similar brain and ANN signals reported thus far.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.quantamagazine.org\/some-neural-networks-learn-language-like-humans-20230522\/\">Read it all<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Some Neural Networks Learn Language Like Humans <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/AH0PeKfCv9\">https:\/\/t.co\/AH0PeKfCv9<\/a> via <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/QuantaMagazine?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@QuantaMagazine<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Felix Schlumpf (@Felix3S) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Felix3S\/status\/1660677880370675712?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">May 22, 2023<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p> <script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How do brains learn? It\u2019s a mystery, one that applies both to the spongy organs in our skulls and to their digital counterparts in our machines. Even though artificial neural networks (ANNs) are built from elaborate webs of artificial neurons,<span class=\"ellipsis\">&hellip;<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=120782\">Read more &#8250;<\/a><\/div>\n<p><!-- end of .read-more --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":794,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175,122,95],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-120782","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anthropology","category-language","category-science-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120782","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/794"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=120782"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120782\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":120787,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120782\/revisions\/120787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=120782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=120782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=120782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}