The cognitive cycle

Abstract

In the twenty years from first grade to a PhD, students never learn any subject by the methods for which machine-learning algorithms have been designed. Those algorithms are useful for analyzing large volumes of data. But they don't enable a computer system to learn a language as quickly and accurately as a three-year-old child. They're not even as effective as a mother raccoon teaching her babies how to find the best garbage cans. For all animals, learning is integrated with the cognitive cycle from perception to purposeful action. Many algorithms are needed to support that cycle. But an intelligent system must be more than a collection of algorithms. It must integrate them in a cognitive cycle of perception, learning, reasoning, and action. That cycle is key to designing intelligent systems.