Why this seminar?
Discussion of “intelligence” matters more than ever — not least because of the recent AI era. Machine intelligence has always been inspired by a variety of disciplines: psychology, cognitive science, neuroscience, linguistics, philosophy and more. Yet there are only a few places to discuss these interdisciplinary questions about intelligence, especially for undergraduate students.
We want to fill this gap: to broadly discuss interdisciplinary topics on intelligence, together with students from various disciplines, interests and backgrounds.
What we ask
Our broad question is:
What is (machine) intelligence, and how do different disciplines contribute to understanding it?
Core concepts include, for example:
- Mechanisms of learning, memory and reasoning
- The relation between language and intelligence
- The nature of meaning and understanding
- Theory of mind, embodiment, interpretability, measuring intelligence
- And more…
These concepts are actively discussed in the machine learning community today, and at the same time have a long history in psychology, neuroscience, linguistics and philosophy. Each seminar session places a machine learning perspective and an adjacent discipline’s perspective side by side on one shared topic.
What we want to achieve
- Build a basic understanding of machine learning and modern language models, so that everyone can join the discussion on common ground
- Put research from multiple disciplines side by side under a shared topic, and understand how each discipline approaches the problem of intelligence
- Experience thinking beyond the boundary of your own major, which is a useful training for any background