Tag Archives: Computing

Cyborgs v ‘holdout humans’: what the world might be like if our species survives for a million years

Anders Sandberg is a James Martin Research Fellow, at the Future of Humanity Institute & Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford. His research centres on societal and ethical issues surrounding human enhancement and new technology, as well as estimating the capabilities and underlying science of future technologies. Topics of particular interest include enhancement of cognition, cognitive biases, technology-enabled collective intelligence, neuroethics and public policy. He has worked on this within the EU project ENHANCE, where he also was responsible for public outreach and online presence. Besides scientific publications in neuroscience, ethics, and future studies, he has also participated in the public debate about human enhancement internationally. Anders also held an AXA Research Fellowship and is now the senior researcher in the FHI-Amlin collaboration on systemic risk of risk modelling.

BUT, IT’S BEAUTIFUL! Why Artificial Intelligence Can’t Make Art

Steve Sangapore is a contemporary oil painter and mixed media sculptor. Using vastly different stylistic approaches of composition, medium and structure throughout various series, his work can be described at once as aesthetically traditional and conceptually contemporary. His work is intellectually exploratory with a gravitation toward religion, science and the human condition.

Can machines be self-aware? New research explains how this could happen

Michael Timothy Bennett is a PhD Student, School of Computing, Australian National University
“After obtaining a masters from London Business School, I worked for 7 years in the technology sector in the UK, Italy, US and India. After founding a successful machine learning consultancy in London, I returned home to Australia to undertake research focused on artificial intelligence, studying at the ANU.”

Alan Turing: how the world’s most famous codebreaker unlocked the secrets of nature’s beauty

Dr Natasha Ellison is a Mathematical Ecologist, currently working as a Postdoctoral Associate at Mississippi State University. Prior to her current position she taught in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Sheffield. She completed a PhD with Dr Jonathan Potts and Professor Ben Hatchwell, focussing on partial differential equation and individual-based models of the home range patterns of Long Tailed Tits.

Cross-pollination among neuroscience, psychology and AI research yields a foundational understanding of thinking

Paul S. Rosenbloom is Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, University of Southern California.
“Before I retired, I was also Director for Cognitive Architecture research at the Institute for Creative Technologies. I have pursued research in artificial intelligence for most of the last 45 years, focused on integrated cognition/intelligence; that is, on how to combine the core mechanisms necessary to yield general human-like intelligence. I am a Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, the Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Cognitive Science Society.”

Christian Lebiere is a Research Faculty in the Psychology Department at Carnegie Mellon University, having received his Ph.D. from the CMU School of Computer Science. Since 1991, he has worked on the development of the ACT-R cognitive architecture and was co-author with John R. Anderson of the 1998 book ‘The Atomic Components of Thought’. Most recently, he has been involved with John Laird and Paul Rosenbloom in defining the Common Model of Cognition, a community-wide effort to consolidate and formalize the scientific progress resulting from the 40-year research program in cognitive architectures.

John E. Laird is the John L. Tishman Professor of Engineering, University of Michigan.
“My major research interest is in creating human-level artificial intelligent entities, with an emphasis on the underlying cognitive architecture. As part of my research, I study both artificial and natural intelligence.”

Mediating our relationship to the molecular world

Laura Splan is a transdisciplinary artist working at the intersections of science, technology, and culture. Her research-driven projects connect hidden artifacts of biotechnology to everyday lives through embodied interactions and sensory engagement. Her recent exhibitions featuring molecular animations and material artifacts of laboratory animals include her large-scale immersive installation in the Brooklyn Army Terminal at BioBAT Art Space, NYC.

Cognitive Architectures for Artificial Consciousness

“Consciousness is what makes us human, and therefore, to build a human-like robot, it is inescapable to face the problem of consciousness.”

Antonio Chella is a Professor of Robotics and Director of RoboticsLab at the Department of Engineering, University of Palermo. He is the author of more than 200 publications and an editorial director of scientific journals and of book series in the fields of Robot Consciousness, Computational Creativity, Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence.

Why AI can’t ever reach its full potential without a physical body

Mark Lee is Emeritus Professor in Computer Science, Aberystwyth University. “I have degrees in Electrical Engineering and Psychology and have worked in AI, robotics and CS for 40 years. I am a fellow of the IET and of the Learned Society of Wales. My research explores how robots might learn about the world in the same way that infants build up their understanding in the first few years. This approach (known as Developmental Robotics) contrasts with the Big Data and Deep Learning methods of modern Artificial Intelligence. My recent book, “HOW TO GROW A ROBOT: DEVELOPING HUMAN-FRIENDLY, SOCIAL AI” (MIT Press, 2020) explains these ideas, and their consequences, in detail.”

Neuroscience in pictures: the best images of the year

Wei Luan is a Postdoctoral Researcher, The University of Queensland. His current research studies how the dopamine neuronal system is affected in schizophrenia from the beginning of embryonic brain development.

Merja Joensuu is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at The Single Molecule Neuroscience Lab, The University of Queensland, lead by Prof Frederic A Meunier. The overall aim of research is to study how neurons communicate in health and disease by using super-resolution microscopy techniques.

Ravi Kiran Kasula is a PhD Student, The University of Queensland.

GPT-3: new AI can write like a human but don’t mistake that for thinking – neuroscientist

Guillaume Thierry is Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience, Bangor University.

“I am passionate about the human mind and how it makes sense of the world around us. My research is devoted to understanding how we form concepts, consciously or unconsciously, how we manipulate them, through language or nonverbally, how we learn, remember, forget, and imagine. In my applied work, I strive to inspire individuals to attain higher state of awareness of the world and of themselves. I share real stories and construct fictional ones to entice the imagination of others and invite everyone along on the path to higher levels of insight, understanding, and joy.”