Babies are learning to navigate their surroundings, improving their ability to steer clear of obstacles and achieve goals, with a cycle of exploration, learning, and return to a safe base.
Intelligence is seen as accumulation of skills and behaviors over time, not a singular attribute. The concept of steering, the ability to react to the environment in real time, is highlighted as a foundational aspect of intelligence by author Max Bennett.
Using the example of a Roomba navigating a room by bumping into obstacles and adjusting its path without memory or learning, the importance of real-time reaction without storage or learning is emphasized for basic intelligent behavior.
The comparison is made between a baby's learning process of crawling, with the accumulation of skills over time, and product teams needing to similarly accumulate knowledge and skills to improve and innovate.