To try to answer this question, we’ll build a digital being with a simple brain, and watch it learn a new behavior.
In our previous article, we created a creature called a spark that could steer towards light. And we saw how small changes to its neural circuitry gave rise to very different behaviors.
Back then, we’d wired these circuits into the spark’s brain by hand. But now, we want it to learn the same behaviors by itself.
After all, you didn’t come into this world knowing how to walk, talk or read. While some of your abilities, such as breathing or swallowing, are wired by evolution, you gained others through an arduous process of trial and error.
