These images show how learning – a universal feature of intelligence in living beings – can be mimicked in a nickel oxide insulator. Image: Rutgers University-New Brunswick.Researchers at Rutgers University, together with their collaborators, have found that learning – a universal feature of intelligence in living beings – can be mimicked in nickel oxide, a discovery that could inspire new algorithms for artificial intelligence (AI). The researchers report their work in a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
One of the fundamental characteristics of humans is their ability to continuously learn from and adapt to changing environments. But until recently, AI has been narrowly focused on emulating human logic. Now, researchers are looking to mimic human cognition in devices that can learn, remember and make decisions the way a human brain does.
Emulating such features in the solid state could inspire new algorithms in AI and neuromorphic computing that would have the flexibility to address uncertainties, contradictions and other aspects of everyday life. Neuromorphic computing mimics the neural structure and operation of the human brain, in part by building artificial nerve systems to transfer electrical signals that mimic brain signals.
To mimic learning, researchers from Rutgers University, Purdue University and other institutions studied how the electrical conductivity of nickel oxide, a special type of insulating material, responded when its environment was changed repeatedly over various time intervals.
“The goal was to find a material whose electrical conductivity can be tuned by modulating the concentration of atomic defects with external stimuli such as oxygen, ozone and light,” explained Subhasish Mandal, a postdoctoral associate in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Rutgers-New Brunswick. “We studied how this material behaves when we dope the system with oxygen or hydrogen, and most importantly, how the external stimulation changes the material's electronic properties.”
The researchers found that when the gas stimulus changed rapidly, the material couldn’t respond in full. It stayed in an unstable state in either environment and its response began to decrease. When the researchers introduced a noxious stimulus such as ozone, the material began to respond more strongly only to decrease again.
“The most interesting part of our results is that it demonstrates universal learning characteristics such as habituation and sensitization that we generally find in living species,” Mandal said. “These material characteristics in turn can inspire new algorithms for artificial intelligence. Much as collective motion of birds or fish have inspired AI, we believe collective behavior of electrons in a quantum solid can do the same in the future.
“The growing field of AI requires hardware that can host adaptive memory properties beyond what is used in today’s computers. We find that nickel oxide insulators, which historically have been restricted to academic pursuits, might be interesting candidates to be tested in future for brain-inspired computers and robotics.”
This story is adapted from material from Rutgers University, with editorial changes made by Materials Today. The views expressed in this article do not necessarily represent those of Elsevier. Link to original source.