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Presentations and Demos
Psychometric AI >
Presentations and Demos
2005 July 19
2005 May 19
2005 February 4
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How to Build Smart Machines: Relax "Smart" Or Pray
RPI, Troy, NY -- 4101 Sage Lab. Building
Selmer Bringsjord |
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Selmer Bringsjord, Professor of Philosophy and Computer Science and Chair of the
Department of Cognitive Science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and creator of
BRUTUS a story telling smart machine, argues that the meaning of 'smart' is
dizzyingly elastic. For some, ants are smart. For others, those who can't handle
higher mathematics aren't smart, and of course this criterion rules out not only
ants, but most homo sapiens. If we're not too discriminating when it comes to this
term, Professor Bringsjord argues that we can safely say that building smart
machines is doable and that, in fact, he has done it. On the other hand, if by
'smart' we mean to point to those mental powers possessed by human persons, smart
machines can't be built -- unless the Almighty helps us!
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QuickTime movie (.mov, 31.8 MB) |
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Windows movie (.wmv, 25.8 MB) |
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2004 October 23
2004 September 1
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Can Cognitive Science Survive the Advent of Hypercomputation?
RPI, Troy, NY -- 4101 Sage Lab. Building
Selmer Bringsjord |
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(Cognitive Science Society Online Lecture 5/21/04)
Though exact definitions are hard to come by, there is little doubt that cognitive
science is a field devoted to understanding (and perhaps simulating, and even
maybe replicating) sophisticated cognition in computation. This has been the case
since the field was born, and present-day leaders are carrying the original torch
(e.g., today John Anderson sustains Newell's computationalist dream to capture all
of human cognition in computation, as a recent BBS target article by JA makes
plain). But a revolution is underway outside cognitive science: A mode of
information processing radically more powerful than ordinary computation.
*hyper*computation -- has now been specified, and is well-understood. This
revolution has so far been located in logic, math, theoretical computer science,
and technical philosophy. In light of hypercomputation, what is the status of
old-style cognitive science stemming back to Simon and Newell and others? Can the
old-style cog sci survive? *Should* it survive? And the recent turn toward
embodied cog sci, is that *also* threatened by hypercomputation? Is there a new
kind of cognitive science that should be devised, and pursued? In this talk, I
answer these questions, respectively, as: It's dying; No; No; Yes; Yes. I explain
along the way that if cognitive scientists had faced up to the original negative
theorems about the limits of standard computation discovered by the likes of
Turing, the turbulence the field must now go through could have been avoided. I
also offer concrete suggestions for how to pursue cognitive science from the
hypercomputational standpoint, which involves treating minds as what I call
*super*minds.
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2004 June 30
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Toward Two New Abilities for PERI: Object Assembly and Picture Arrangement (sub-tests from the WAIS)
RPI, Troy, NY -- Walker 5113
Selmer Bringsjord, Bettina Schimanski |
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We report on our development of two new, preliminary algorithm-sketches that will
eventually be implemented in the robot PERI (www.cogsci.rpi.edu/peri): one for the
Object Assembly sub-test on the WAIS IQ test, and one for the Picture Arrangement
sub-test on the same IQ test. (As you may know, PERI is destined to be the
smartest robot on the planet.) In Object Assembly, one is given pieces of a
physical representation of an everyday object (e.g., an elephant), without knowing
what the object is -- and you must assemble the pieces to reveal the mystery
object. In Picture Arrangement (which some of you may have seen before), one is
given, on pieces of cardboard, jumbled snapshots of a story -- and you must
arrange the pieces so as to make a coherent story.
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2003 November 21
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Bridging Artificial Intelligence, Psychometrics, and Economics: New Theory of Intelligence & Rationality
RPI, Troy, NY -- Heffner Alumni House
Selmer Bringsjord, Bettina Schimanski |
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PowerPoint presentation (.ppt, 4.56 MB) |
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2003 August 15
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