coggroup October 2023

coggroup@mx1.psych.mcgill.ca

3 participants
3 discussions

[Coggroup] Dec 15: "Intuitive Physical Reasoning and Mental Simulation" (Todd Gureckis, NYU)
by Stevan R. Harnad, Dr. 29 Oct '23

29 Oct '23

cog Intuitive Physical Reasoning and Mental Simulation Todd Gureckis Psychology, NYU UQÀM ISC DIC CRIA Séminaire en informatique cognitive/Cognitive Informatics Seminar Thursday, 10:30 am December 15, 2022 Zoom: https://uqam.zoom.us/j/88481835073 ( videos of past seminars: https://youtu.be/XePaBMc_HFg ) Abstract: The ability to reason about the physics of our world (e.g., what arrangements of objects are stable, how things will fall or move under a force) is central to human intelligence. One influential hypothesis is that this capacity stems from the ability to perform “mental simulations” of physical events (in effect, playing a mental “movie” of the future evolution of a scene according to the laws of physics). In this talk, I’ll try to pin down several core commitments of the mental simulation approach that must be present for the general theory to be viable. I then will describe experiments we conducted recently trying to test these commitments. Along the way, we stumbled into several curious and novel errors and biases in human physical reasoning ability that we believe represent limits to the universality of contemporary simulation theories. If there is time, I will discuss a related project considering how efficient or optimal people are when they “experiment” in the physical world in order to learn the covert properties of objects such as mass or attractive/repulsive forces like magnetism. Todd M. Gureckis, Professor of Psychology, New York University, studies how people actively explore their world in order to learn, including everyday reasoning capacities for the physical and social world. His research combines methods of computational modeling, developmental psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and online data collection. He is the founder and a lead developer of the psiTurk<https://psiturk.org/> package, a tool for facilitating online experiments used in hundreds of research labs. His work has been recognized by the NSF CAREER award, the Presidential Early Career Award (PECASE) from the Office of Science and Technology Policy at the White House, the James S. McDonnell Foundation Scholar award, and several paper and conferences awards with his students including the Marr Prize from the Cognitive Science Society, the Clifford T. Morgan Prize from the Psychonomic Society. He has variously served an Associate Editor for Cognitive Science, Topics in Cognitive Science, and Computational Brain and Behavior. References https://gureckislab.org/<https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fgureckisl…> : https://gureckislab.org/papers/#/ref/ludwin2021limits<https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fgureckisl…> https://gureckislab.org/papers/#/ref/ludwinpeery2020broken<https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fgureckisl…> https://gureckislab.org/papers/#/ref/bramley2018intuitive<https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fgureckisl…>

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[Coggroup] Pynapple Workshop
by Dhruv Mehrotra 19 Oct '23

19 Oct '23

Hi there, The Peyrache Lab and the Graduate Students' Association for Neuroscience is hosting a workshop on our software, Pynapple, which is a software for analyzing neurophysiological data. "The Graduate Students' Association for Neuroscience is hosting an Introductory Workshop on Pynapple, a lightweight Python library for analyzing your neurophysiological data. The workshop runs from Oct. 25-27th, and coffee & lunch will be provided! Registration is now open and space is limited, so we urge you to complete our registration form before the deadline on October 23! Link to registration form: https://forms.office.com/r/NZJHnXJ8G9" Please spread the word in your circles. Thank you so much! Dhruv Sent from Outlook for Android<https://aka.ms/AAb9ysg>

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[Coggroup] Thu 10:30 ZOOM: Paul Rosenbloom (USC) : "RETHINKING THE PHYSICAL SYMBOLS SYSTEMS HYPOTHESIS"
by Stevan Harnad 09 Oct '23

09 Oct '23

Rethinking the Physical Symbol Systems Hypothesis Paul Rosenbloom<https://viterbi.usc.edu/directory/faculty/Rosenbloom/Paul> Computer Science, USC Thursday 10:30 am (EDT) October 12 https://uqam.zoom.us/j/83002459798 ABSTRACT: It is now more than a half-century since the Physical Symbol Systems Hypothesis (PSSH) was first articulated as an empirical hypothesis. More recent evidence from work with neural networks and cognitive architectures has weakened it, but it has not yet been replaced in any satisfactory manner. Based on a rethinking of the nature of computational symbols – as atoms or placeholders – and thus also of the systems in which they participate, a hybrid approach is introduced that responds to these challenges while also helping to bridge the gap between symbolic and neural approaches, resulting in two new hypotheses, one – the Hybrid Symbol Systems Hypothesis (HSSH) – that is to replace the PSSH and the other focused more directly on cognitive architectures. This overall approach has been inspired by how hybrid symbol systems are central in the Common Model of Cognition and the Sigma cognitive architectures, both of which will be introduced – along with the general notion of a cognitive architecture – via “flashbacks” during the presentation. Paul S. Rosenbloom is Professor Emeritus of Computer Science in the Viterbi School of Engineering at the University of Southern California (USC). His research has focused on cognitive architectures (models of the fixed structures and processes that together yield a mind), such as Soar and Sigma; the Common Model of Cognition (a partial consensus about the structure of a human-like mind); dichotomic maps (structuring the space of technologies underlying AI and cognitive science); “essential” definitions of key concepts in AI and cognitive science (such as intelligence, theories, symbols, and architectures); and the relational model of computing as a great scientific domain (akin to the physical, life and social sciences). Rosenbloom, P. S. (2023). Rethinking the Physical Symbol Systems Hypothesis<https://www.dropbox.com/s/l9v7mjddktlokgo/Rosenbloom-PSSH-HSSH%20Final%20D.…>. In Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Artificial General Intelligence (pp. 207-216). Cham, Switzerland: Springer. Laird, J. E., Lebiere, C. & Rosenbloom, P. S. (2017). A Standard Model of the Mind: Toward a Common Computational Framework across Artificial Intelligence<https://www.dropbox.com/s/z50a70vl8sn3all/LLR-SMM-AI%20Magazine-Published-P…>, Cognitive Science, Neuroscience, and Robotics. AI Magazine, 38, 13-26. Rosenbloom, P. S., Demski, A. & Ustun, V. (2016). The Sigma cognitive architecture and system: Towards functionally elegant grand unification<https://www.dropbox.com/s/hwv6eok7uhcps91/jagi-2016-0001.pdf?dl=0>. Journal of Artificial General Intelligence, 7, 1-103. Rosenbloom, P. S., Demski, A. & Ustun, V. (2016). Rethinking Sigma’s graphical architecture: An extension to neural networks<https://www.dropbox.com/s/3q0mhigs9gv7mid/RSGA%20AGI%202016%20Final%20D.pdf…>. Proceedings of the 9th Conference on Artificial General Intelligence (pp. 84-94). Upcoming Seminars: 14-Sep Benjamin Bergen UCSD LLMs are Impressive But We Still Need Grounding 21-Sep Dimitri C Mollo Umea Grounding in LLMs: Functional AI Ontologies 28-Sep Dave Chalmers NYU Does Thinking Require Grounding? 05-Oct Ellie Pavlick Brown Symbols and Grounding in LLMs 12-Oct Paul Rosenbloom USC Rethinking the Physical Symbol Systems Hypothesis 19-Oct Melanie Mitchell Santa Fe Ins Language and Grounding 26-Oct Dor Abrahamson Berkeley Enactive Symbol Grounding in Mathematics Education 02-Nov 09-Nov Eric Schulz Casey Kennington Tuebingen Boise State Machine Psychology Robotic grounding and LLMs 16-Nov Usef Faghihi UQTR « Algorithmes de Deep Learning flous causaux » 23-Nov Anders Søgaard Copenhagen LLMs: Indication or Representation? 30-Nov Christoph Durt Freiburg IAS LLMs, Patterns, and Understanding 07-Dec Jake Hanson ASU Falsifying the Integrated Information Theory of Consciousness 14-Dec Frédéric Alexandre Bordeaux « Apprentissage continu et contrôlé cognitif » https://uqam.zoom.us/j/83002459798

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coggroup October 2023