We didn’t have a computer at the time, but my Dad showed me on his calculator the different combinations that we would have to solve for. How long will it take you to solve the maze?” He would say, “Now you try solving the maze but only take right hand turns, but back up if you hit a wall and then go the other direction. My Dad didn’t explain to me how Mustang solved it so fast but he did show me the concept of an algorithm. But nevertheless, after only one try, Mustang would speed his way to the exit and devour his prize: a giant bowl full of sunflower seeds.
It included a heavy Plexiglas lid that let us get a bird’s eye view into Mustang’s progress. It was an elaborate contraption designed with interchangeable walls cut from balsa wood. One summer, my dad built a maze for Mustang. And in fact, rats can even outsmart AI based machines. They are so good at it that they easily outsmart humans in solving mazes. Quite simply put, they have spent millennia digging and burrowing and finding their way around underground tunnels. Their maze-running ability comes from their evolutionary history. What I didn’t know at the time, was that hamsters, mice, and of rats are extremely gifted at running mazes. And of course being 7, I had no clue what was about to happen. My father, who was a PhD in math and engineering, decided it was a perfect opportunity for me to learn about the innate abilities of rodents to solve mazes. He usually spent his day on his hamster wheel and exploring our house in his hamster ball. Mustang was an ordinary hamster with orange and white fur and a passion for sunflower seeds. But this is exactly how I came to learn my first lesson in the field of Artificial Intelligence when I was 7 years old - from my pet hamster, “ Mustang”. If a hamster could talk, it probably wouldn’t be able to say much, let alone tell us anything about advanced mathematics or data science.
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