Thursday Morning Talk

Aravind Battaje and Vito Mengers, “Principles at Play: What is Intelligence?”

MAR 2.057

What is intelligence? We delve into the collaborative efforts at SCIoI, where we aim to understand intelligence through the identification of commonalities. Inspired by ongoing research and historical parallels, we present candidate principles, inviting the audience to contribute insights and discuss their alignment with ongoing projects. This talk marks a step towards refining our understanding

Thursday Morning Talk

Asieh Daneshi (Science of Intelligence), “Behavioral contagion in human and artificial multi-agent systems”

In this talk, Asieh will explore the dynamics of decision-making and risk-taking within social contexts and how everyday decisions, often laden with potential negative outcomes, are influenced not only by individual judgment but significantly by the surrounding social environment. Her research employs the "Balloon Analogue Risk-Taking" experiment in a controlled setting applying VR-technology in order

Distinguished Speaker Series

POSTPONED: Richard McElreath, “The Cultural and Ecological Nature of Intelligence”

Abstract: How do we reconcile the extraordinary success of the human species with the apparent stupidity of people and organizations? How can we understand the transformation of humans from foraging apes to urban clerks, without any appreciable change in physiology? No one has definitive answers to these questions, but we begin to answer them by

Thursday Morning Talk

Oren Forkosh (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem), “Behavior, Personality, and Affective States of Freely Behaving Groups of Mice and Other Animals”

Behavior, Personality, and Affective States of Freely Behaving Groups of Mice and Other Animals In recent years, the study of animal behavior in neuroscience has seen a significant shift towards more naturalistic and less intrusive methods. It is under these conditions that the true spectrum of animal behavior can be exhibited, free from the artificial

Thursday Morning Talk

Tim Kietzmann (University of Osnabrück), “Large language models offer a rich representational format for understanding the transformation of visual information in the human brain.”

Abstract: Originating from the connectionist movement of cognitive science, deep neural networks (DNNs) have had tremendous influence on artificial intelligence, operating at the core of today’s most powerful applications. At the same time, cognitive computational neuroscientists have recognised their promise to act as “Goldilocks” models of brain function: DNNs are grounded in sensory data, can

Distinguished Speaker Series

Antonio Bicchi (University of Pisa), “What is it like to be a bot?”

Abstract The impressive evolution that artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and robotics have recently undergone reached a point where it is now possible to fuse these technologies and create another body for the self. This possibility poses new questions at the core of embodied intelligence. In this talk I will examine a few of the technical,

Thursday Morning Talk

Christian Poth (Bielefeld University), “Task-driven phasic alertness: How being ready for action relies on the current task”

Abstract: Humans often must respond quickly to events happening in their environment. To support fast perception and action, the brain has evolved a warning system. Warning stimuli are used to elicit a transient state of readiness for perception and action (phasic alertness) that results in faster perceptual processing and faster decision-making for action. Phasic alertenss

Distinguished Speaker Series

POSTPONED: Onur Güntürkün (Ruhr-Universität Bochum), “The evolution of brain and cognition: A wild hypothesis”

Onur Güntürkün is regarded as a pioneer of biologically based psychology. The aim of his work is to find out how perception, thought and action arise in the brain. He is interested in diverse topics, such as motor learning, fear, risk-taking behavior and even kissing. In his research, Güntürkün combines psychological, biological and neuroanatomical aspects

Distinguished Speaker Series

Michael Beetz (Universität Bremen), “Empowering Robots with Digital Mental Models: Filling the Cognitive Gap for Everyday Tasks”

In this talk I introduce Digital Mental Models (DMMs) as a novel cognitive capability of AI-powered and cognition-enabled robots. By combining digital twin technology with symbolic knowledge representation and embodying this combination into robots, we tackle the challenge of converting vague task requests into specific robot actions, that is robot motions that cause desired physical