IIT is a solid place for AGI and cool robotics research, I recommend it based on what I know about them.
As far as I see, those two new topics are a kind of development of an artificial cerebellum.
THEME 8. Developmental Robotics And Robot Learning Of Motor Skills
Tutors: Dr. Petar Kormushev, Prof. Darwin G. Caldwell
Department: ADVR (Department of Advanced Robotics, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia)
THEME 9. Robot Learning For Agile Locomotion Of Compliant Humanoid Robots
Tutors: Dr. Petar Kormushev, Prof. Nikos Tsagarakis
http://kormushev.com/news/phd-positions-in-robotics-and-machine-learning-for-2014/
Applications deadline: 20/9/2013
Thursday, August 29, 2013
PhD positions in Robotics and Machine Learning for 2014 in the Italian Institute of Technologies
Tuesday, August 27, 2013
Issues on the AGIRI AGI email list and the AGI community in general - an Analysis
Please, see the essay: Issues-AGI-community-AGIRI-8-2013.pdf
"...Note: That post refers also to general problems in the AGI community, including the academic one – such as [that] average researchers are not generally intelligent enough and they do not have a complete grasp of all the areas they should have....
(...)
"- Multi-intra-inter-domain blindness/insufficiency [see other posts from Todor on the list] - people claim they are working on understanding "general" intelligence, but they clearly do not display traits of general/multi-inter-disciplinary interests and skills.
[ Note: Cognitive science, psychology, AI, NLP/Computational Linguistics, Mathematics, Robotics … – sorry, that's not general! General is being adept, fluent and talented in music, dance, visual arts (all), acting, story-telling, and all kinds of arts; in sociology, philosophy; sports … (…) ... + all of the typical ones + as many as possible other hard sciences and soft sciences and languages, and that is supposed to come from fluency in learning and mastering anything. That's something typical researchers definitely lack, which impedes their thinking about general intelligence. ](...) "
+ a lot more, see the work
“Twenkid” Arnaudov
From:
Todor Arnaudov <xxxx>
xxx@listbox.com
Re: [agi] Student here, please advise.
Thu, 8 Aug 2013 00:51:15 +0300
A post to AGIRI AGI list, (minor
corrections of typos, added/changed
a few words etc., and added several
additional
notes.
http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/2013/08/search/dHdlbmtpZA/sort/time_rev/page/1/entry/2:3/20130807175128:7EE86152-FFAB-11E2-A2BE-8DED093DF8D9/
Note: That post refers also to general problems in the AGI community,
including the academic one – such as average researchers are
not generally intelligent enough and they do not have a complete
grasp of all the areas they should have.
this course program, AFAIK that was the first University course on
AGI, it suggests what topics/fields to be studied and in what
sequence:
http://artificial-mind.blogspot.com/2010/04/universal-artificial-intelligence.html
Off this list, AGI folks have shared ideas and inspired each others
research plenty..
It may be the case on this list that people don't get inspired by
each others' work though, I dunno -- I haven't
monitored this list carefully for some years...
Well, that's how I see the case here.
- Sometimes there's a cross of points, but it tends to be one-sided - the other side does not agree or doesn't have reciprocal interest, "he's the only one with that idea", doesn't accept that there are
similarities - "they are superficial ones" - There's no ranking: too many leaders, but zero followers and no way to judge about who should be trusted
- Very few make an effort to get to know with others' work out of the tiny
superficial talks in emails; furthermore:
- Long emails are often blamed "you talk too much" or are just
ignored or answered in 2 lines, even if the author clearly has what
to say --> actually the readers can't concentrate on the subject
matter, "don't have time" or don't care - the author
doesn't have the authority needed in order to justify the time and
efforts they are supposed to invest, the other readers believe they
are too much superior
- There's severely not consistent background of the participants, and what's
worse, there are severe gaps in the backgrounds which the
"sufferers" are not aware of, not willing or not capable
to fill, yet they act like if they didn't have those gaps
[ Note: Cognitive science, psychology, AI, NLP/Computational Linguistics, Mathematics, Robotics … – sorry, that's not general! General is being adept, fluent and talented in music, dance, visual arts (all), acting, story-telling, and all kinds of arts; in sociology, philosophy; sports … (…) ... + all of the typical ones + as many as possible other hard sciences and soft sciences and languages, and that is supposed to come from fluency in learning and mastering anything. That's something typical researchers definitely lack, which impedes their thinking about general intelligence. ]
Moreover, since "AGI problem is an unsolved problem" to prove them wrong in terms they would get, and due to that weakness of many pseudo AGI-ers who are not generally intelligent themselves (not versatile) to realize that due to their non-versatile intelligence they can't understand the trivialness of some problems which are unreachable for their minds, they would rather believe they know better, because they have some other credentials and external social ranks - PhDs, conference publications. It doesn't matter that those publications obviously yield zero meaningful results.
See also: http://artificial-mind.blogspot.com/2013/02/versatile-self-improvement-vsi-vi-vlsi.html
When these fields are inaccessible by the philosopher's mind, there are only general words or concepts. It's possible that the philosopher does "feel" some kind of introspective understanding, but she can't express it in "convertible" terms, so it stays "inside".
See also: Rationalization and Confusions Caused by High Level Generalizations and the Feedforward-Feedback Imbalance in Brain and Generalization Hierarchies
http://artificial-mind.blogspot.com/2011/10/rationalization-and-confusions-caused.html
Otherwise they should have given up, be part of the existing institutes - "institutionalized" - or from the "AI". But they are not from those institutes, because when they proclaimed that "AI was wrong" they were outsiders already, heading towards new directions.
[Yes, one can borrow a server on the cloud, but that poses other problems (such as privacy and communication overhead, and access to sensors etc.), and that's not cheap for poor independent researchers anyway]
Friday, August 23, 2013
Тошко 2.055 | Toshko 2.055 - Bulgarian Text-to-Speech Synthesizer Highly Configurable
Вече с поддръжка на Unicode, и др. Програмата вече може да се използва спокойно на компютри, които са инсталирани извън България или са локализирани на произволен език. Тошко 2.
Сайт на Тошко 2 за актуални новини: http://twenkid.com/software/toshko2/
По-стари новини за синтезатора на реч.
Синтезатор на българска реч, микро-фонемен, формантен, висока степен на настройка. Преобразува текст в реч.
Monday, August 19, 2013
Supports for the Hypothesis of Higher Brains Re-iterating the Functions of the Lower Ones - implies that the function of the higher ones could be induced by understanding the functions of the lower ones and extending them
It's about proposals that I've initially published there: http://artificial-mind.blogspot.com/2011/02/proposal-for-directedguided-evolution.html
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Proposal for Directed/Guided Evolution of a Cognitive Module/Algorithm by Step-by-Step Modification of a Basic One - from Archicortex to Neocortex
And later in a comment after: http://artificial-mind.blogspot.com/2011/10/rationalization-and-confusions-caused.html
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Rationalization and Confusions Caused by High Level Generalizations and the Feedforward-Feedback Imbalance in Brain and Generalization Hierarchies
From that article:
-- CITE from Nature Neuroscience BEGIN --An opinion of B.K. about that, from the comments:
"Surprise! A unifying model of dorsal anterior cingulate function?"
Tobias Egner
Nature Neuroscience 14, 1219–1220 (2011) doi:10.1038/nn.2932
Published online 27 September 2011
Few brain regions' functions have been debated as intensely as those of the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex. A computational model now suggests that seemingly diverse cingulate responses may be explained by a single construct, 'negative surprise', which occurs when actions do not produce the expected outcome.
-- END --
([About] My hypothesis from the "Guided evolution of ..." - newer brains [regarding the Triune theory] actually do the older brains' job and are supposed to have a lot of functional similarities. Newer brains intrinsically are "tweaks" of old ones, have significantly more computational resources/room for scaling complexity and extend older brain design to allow for higher resolution and scope.)
"B: OK, reacting to "negative surprise" really means more planning. That's what prefrontal cortex does too, & the difference might be in temporal scope, which would be person & situation -specific."...
Another paper which in my opinion suggests that [dorsal] anterior cingulate's functions are similar to the functions of the prefrontal cortex (PFC):
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22722841
Nature. 2012 Aug 9;488(7410):218-21. doi: 10.1038/nature11239....
Human dorsal anterior cingulate cortex neurons mediate ongoing behavioural adaptation.
Sheth SA, Mian MK, Patel SR, Asaad WF, Williams ZM, Dougherty DD, Bush G, Eskandar EN.
Source ... Nayef Al-Rodhan Laboratories, Department of Neurosurgery, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts 02114, USA.
(...) The dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC), which lies on the medial surface of the frontal lobes, is important in regulating cognitive control. Hypotheses about its function include guiding reward-based decision making, monitoring for conflict between competing responses and predicting task difficulty. (...) Our results demonstrate that the dACC provides a continuously updated prediction of expected cognitive demand to optimize future behavioural responses.
Yet another article, that suggests that the posterior cingulate gyrus has functional similarities to neocortex areas which are more closer to some of the sensory cortices, the visual and somatosensory (postcentral gyrus), which are located posterior as well:
Neural representation of abstract and concrete concepts: a meta-analysis of neuroimaging studies
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20108224
-- CITE BEGIN --
(...) Abstract concepts elicit greater activity in the inferior frontal gyrus and middle temporal gyrus compared to concrete concepts, while concrete concepts elicit greater activity in the posterior cingulate, precuneus, fusiform gyrus, and parahippocampal gyrus compared to abstract concepts. These results suggest greater engagement of the verbal system for processing of abstract concepts and greater engagement of the perceptual system for processing of concrete concepts, likely via mental imagery.
-- END --
Regarding abstract concepts and cognition - Broca's Area, whose impairment causes non-fluent aphasia, is located in the inferior frontal gyrus.
Notice also the parahippocampal gyrus and the fusiform gyrus (the "face cells").
Abstract concepts are related to natural language, which in humans usually is introduced, trained, exercised etc. through speech. That involves a location which is both: high enough (gets the audio and other multi-modal input processed and integrated), and near enough M1 and other motor areas, the tongue, mouth etc. neurotoppical mappings:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Human_motor_cortex_topography.png
and to other executive function areas - such as the orbifrontal cortex, - which are specific by their broad connections to the entire brain, and that they are highly affected by the reward system (dopamine-related), which is about guiding behavior and decision making.
Faces are not that abstract. There are words for "square face", "triangle face" etc., but recognition of specific faces require some more detail, that has to be still in the system when processing - it happens lower in the chain. Another simpler clue that it's supposed to be so is the fact that infants recognize the face of their mother (to fake artificial faces, 2D pictures or other people) as early as the first year.
The parahippocampal gyrus is near the hippocampus and connected to it, as its name suggests, and the hippocampus is the human homologue of the archicortex, the oldest brain in Triune theory.
The bottom line of my hypothesis and propsal is that the functions of the higher brains (in the Triune theory system: Neocortex - Limbic System - Reptilian complex) could be induced by understanding the functions of the lower ones from the chain, which are supposed to be simpler, more transparent and closer to direct sensory processing, and then extending their scope - computational resources, time-span, resolution, memory capacity, generalization steps.
Also vice verse - understanding the higher cognition and gradually simplifying it, going from abstract functions and finding more specific and more "localized", specialized, smaller span/area of application (as inputs and possible reactions); more direct, undistilled processing, should eventually lead to reducing to the functions of the lower brains - the whole systems - or homologous higher-lower areas - such as anterior cingulate to prefrontal cortex.
Of course, this is a general hypothesis, it has to get more specific.
...
Regardin IFG, see also:
Neuroimage. 2010 Apr 15;50(3):1313-9. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2009.12.109. Epub 2010 Jan 4.
The role of the right inferior frontal gyrus: inhibition and attentional control.
Hampshire A, Chamberlain SR, Monti MM, Duncan J, Owen AM. Source
Medical Research Council Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge, UK.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20056157
Wednesday, August 14, 2013
Тошко 2.050 | Toshko 2.050 - Bulgarian Text-to-Speech Synthesizer Highly Configurable
След дълго прекъсване, нова алфа версия на най-мощния и гъвкав синтезатор на българска реч - готови изказвания, зареждане от файл, промяна на изговора на една от съгласните чрез неинвазивна донастройка и др. Тошко 2.
Сайт на Тошко 2 за актуални новини: http://twenkid.com/software/toshko2/
Wednesday, August 7, 2013
Intelligence Science - Another Community amongst AGI, SIGI, VLSI, Developmental Robotics, UAI, Embodied Cognition......
The conference has happened a few days ago.
Strong key notes, take a look:
http://www.intsci.ac.cn/WIS2013/speaker.jsp
See for example:
* Spike-timing-dependent synaptic plasticity in motor-sensor-motor loops
* Is Our Sensing Compressed?
...
Думи: наука за интелигентността, нова общност, освен универсален изкуствен разум, роботика на развитието, мислещи машини, всестранно самоусъвършенстване, самоусъвършенстващ се универсален разум; ... изкуствен интелект; терминология, конференция