BMM 2015 - Brains, Minds and Machines

Brains, Minds and Machines
http://www.mbl.edu/education/special-topics-course...
Directors: L. Mahadevan, Harvard University; and Tomaso Poggio, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
This intensive three-week course will give advanced students a “deep end” introduction to the problem of intelligence ? how the brain produces intelligent behavior and how we may be able to replicate intelligence in machines. Today’s AI technologies, such as Watson and Siri and Deep Learning, are impressive, but their domain specificity and reliance on vast numbers of labeled examples are obvious limitations; few view this as brain-like or human intelligence. The synergistic combination of cognitive science, neurobiology, engineering, mathematics, and computer science holds the promise to build much more robust and sophisticated algorithms implemented in intelligent machines *and* to begin understanding how the brain produces the mind. The goal of this course is to help produce a community of leaders that is equally knowledgeable in neuroscience, cognitive science, and computer science.
The first half of the course will focus on the intersection between biological and computational aspects of learning and vision. The second half will focus on high-level social cognition and artificial intelligence, as well as audition, speech and language processing. Throughout the course, students will participate in tutorials to gain hands on experience with these topics. The course will culminate with student projects on a chosen aspect of the problem of intelligence.
Course instructors will include:
Tomaso Poggio
Gabriel Kreiman
Nancy Kanwisher
Winrich Freiwald
Matt Wilson
Josh Tenenbaum
Liz Spelke
Boris Katz
L Mahadevan
Jim DiCarlo
Aude Oliva