title: Chaos breeds autonomy: connectionist design between bias and baby-sitting.
abstract: In connectionism and its offshoots, models acquire functionality through externally controlled learning schedules. This undermines the claim of these models to autonomy. Providing these models with intrinsic biases is not a solution, as it makes their function dependent on design assumptions. Between these two alternatives, there is room for approaches based on spontaneous self-organization. Structural reorganization in adaptation to spontaneous activity is a well-known phenomenon in neural development. It is proposed here as a way to prepare connectionist models for learning and enhance the autonomy of these models.
authors.affiliation: Laboratory for Perceptual Dynamics, RIKEN BSI, 2-1 Hirosawa, Wako-shi, Saitama 351-0198, Japan. ceesvl@brain.riken.jp
authors.forename: Cees
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: van Leeuwen
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D015982:Bias; D006801:Humans; D007389:Internal-External Control; D008960:Models, Psychological; D016571:Neural Networks, Computer; D017711:Nonlinear Dynamics; D026684:Personal Autonomy; D012919:Social Behavior