Recent times have witnessed an increasing number of applications of deep neural networks towards solving tasks that require superior cognitive abilities, e.g., playing Go, generating art, ChatGPT, etc. Such a dramatic progress raises the question: how generalizable are neural networks in solving problems that demand broad skills? To answer this question, we propose SMART: a Simple Multimodal Algorithmic Reasoning Task (and the associated SMART-101 dataset) for evaluating the abstraction, deduction, and generalization abilities of neural networks in solving visuo-linguistic puzzles designed specifically for children of younger age (6--8). Our dataset consists of 101 unique puzzles; each puzzle comprises a picture and a question, and their solution needs a mix of several elementary skills, including pattern recognition, algebra, and spatial reasoning, among others. To train deep neural networks, we programmatically augment each puzzle to 2,000 new instances; each instance varied in appearance, associated natural language question, and its solution. To foster research and make progress in the quest for artificial general intelligence, we are publicly releasing our SMART-101 dataset, consisting of the full set of programmatically-generated instances of 101 puzzles and their solutions.

The dataset was introduced in our paper Are Deep Neural Networks SMARTer than Second Graders? by Anoop Cherian, Kuan-Chuan Peng, Suhas Lohit, Kevin A. Smith, and Joshua B. Tenenbaum, CVPR 2023