Professor of Anthropology Alex Bentley recalls that in graduate school, his experimental archaeology professor told a student to create a door socket — the hole in a door frame that a bolt slides into — in a slab of sandstone by pecking at it with a rounded stone. After a couple of weeks, the student presented his results to the class. “I pecked the sandstone about 10,000 times,” he said, “and then it broke.”
This kind of experience is known as individual learning. It works through trial and error, with lots of each. Also known as reinforcement learning, it is how children, chimpanzees, crows and AI often learn to do something on their own, such as making a simple tool or solving a puzzle.
But individual learning has limits.
Bentley’s work as an anthropologist on cultural evolution and innovation shows that, unlike individual performance, technology advances through combination and collaboration. Read more at The Conversation.
UT is a member of The Conversation, an independent source for news articles and informed analysis written by the academic community and edited by journalists for the general public. Through this partnership, we seek to provide a better understanding of the important work of our researchers. Read more of our articles published by The Conversation on the UT News page.
—
MEDIA CONTACT:
Stacy Estep (865-974-8304, sestep3@utk.edu)