Growing Artificial Neural Nets

Quite an impressive thought.    Have them grow their own architecture?

Artificial Neural Nets Grow Brainlike cells to find their way   
By John Rennie  in Wired

HAVING THE SENSE to take a shortcut, the most direct route from point A to point B, doesn’t sound like a very impressive test of intelligence. Yet according to a new report appearing last week in Nature, in which researchers describe the performance of their new navigational artificial intelligence, the system’s ability to explore complex simulated environments and find the shortest route to a goal put it in a class previously reserved for humans and other living things.

 --- Original story reprinted with permission from Quanta Magazine, an editorially independent publication of the Simons Foundation whose mission is to enhance public understanding of science by covering research developments and trends in mathematics and the physical and life sciences. --- 

The surprising key to the system’s performance was that while learning how to navigate, the neural net spontaneously developed the equivalent of “grid cells,” sets of brain cells that enable at least some mammals to track their location in space.

For neuroscientists, the new work seems to offer important clues about how grid cells in living brains make us better navigators. It also shows how neural nets could contribute greatly to future neuroscience studies: Neil Burgess, a cognitive neuroscientist at University College London who was not involved with the study, suggested that the systems should “provide fertile ground for understanding how and why the human brain works as it does.”  ..... "