Brains, Minds, and Machines @ MIT May 3-5

The granddaddies of artificial intelligence are holding a conference on reinvigorating the field, bringing together the best thinkers in computer science, cognitive science, neuroscience, and the social sciences for three days.

Key question: Over the past 50 years, research in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) has led to the current development of remarkably successful applications such as Deep Blue, Google search, Kinect, Shazam, Watson, and MobilEye. While each of these systems performs at human level or better in a narrow domain, none can be said to be intelligent. The main thesis to be discussed in the panels is

a) that a new effort in curiosity-driven research is needed in order to understand intelligence and the brain

b) that this new basic research endeavor should tightly combine computer science, cognitive science, neuroscience, and social sciences, and

c) that it should also integrate different facets of intelligence such as vision, planning, language, and social intelligence.

Registration is still open, so if you’re in the Boston area, and you don’t have anything better to do (and really, whatever you’re doing is more important than panels with Chomsky, Minsky, Pinker et al?) go and check it out.

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