The way that humans learn has been studied for many decades now. There are a handful of psychological theories that try to explain how we acquire knowledge, use it, and generalize it in order to apply what we know to completely new scenarios. Taking one step back, we could ask ourselves: what does it mean to learn? We could say that, once we learn something, we are able to repeat it in a more or less detailed way. In reality, learning implies much more than just copying a behavior or memorizing a piece of poetry. In fact, we understand what we learn and are able to generalize that knowledge, which helps us to react correctly to new people, places, and situations.
The need to create a machine that somehow mimics our human behavior and intelligence has been desired for a very long time. Hundreds of years ago, kings were amazed by chess-playing machines...
