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WORKSHOP
A number of workshops and schools are organized during the course of the project, by the INSIGHT partners. In this page you can find the list of past and coming events.
INSIGHT-EVOEVO workshop
15/10/2015, 18/10/2015 - Pullach (Germany)
HOSTING PARTNER
PARMENIDES
PARMENIDES
Framing the autoassociative learning networks in the framework of the neuronal replicators, in order to step closer to a realisitic implementation of the theory.
25/05/2015, 28/05/2015 - Balatonfüred
HOSTING PARTNER
PARMENIDES
PARMENIDES
THE NATURE of INSIGHT PART II
18/02/2015, 19/02/2015 - Parmenides Foundation
HOSTING PARTNER
Parmenides
Almost twenty years after the seminal book the nature of insight appeared (Sternberg & Davidson, 1995), we think the time has come to collect and update the state of the art of
insight problem solving.
Experts that deal with insight problem solving from different perspective are invited.
We aim at providing new neuro-cognitive models and experimental paradigms that help us to better understand the foundations of insight problem solving, and share ideas that foster our further projects.
Parmenides
Almost twenty years after the seminal book the nature of insight appeared (Sternberg & Davidson, 1995), we think the time has come to collect and update the state of the art of
insight problem solving.
Experts that deal with insight problem solving from different perspective are invited.
We aim at providing new neuro-cognitive models and experimental paradigms that help us to better understand the foundations of insight problem solving, and share ideas that foster our further projects.
AISB50 – Celebrating 50 years of the AISB
31/03/2014, 03/04/2014 - University of London, SE14 6NW
HOSTING PARTNER
QUEEN MARY AND WESTFIELD COLLEGE, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON (QMUL).
The AISB 2014 Convention at Goldsmiths, University of London (hereafter AISB-50) will commemorate both 50 years since the founding of the Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and the Simulation of Behaviour (the AISB) and sixty years since the death of Alan Turing, founding father of both Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence. The convention will be held at Goldsmiths, University of London, UK from the 1st to the 4th April 2014, and will follow the same overall structure as previous conventions. This will include a set of co-located symposia hosting events that include talks, posters, panels, discussions, demonstrations, and outreach sessions.
QUEEN MARY AND WESTFIELD COLLEGE, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON (QMUL).
The AISB 2014 Convention at Goldsmiths, University of London (hereafter AISB-50) will commemorate both 50 years since the founding of the Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and the Simulation of Behaviour (the AISB) and sixty years since the death of Alan Turing, founding father of both Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence. The convention will be held at Goldsmiths, University of London, UK from the 1st to the 4th April 2014, and will follow the same overall structure as previous conventions. This will include a set of co-located symposia hosting events that include talks, posters, panels, discussions, demonstrations, and outreach sessions.
Consensus and Misunderstanding. Drust workshop (ESF) Rome
23/03/2014 - Rome, Italy
HOSTING PARTNER
UNIVERSITAT POMPEU FABRA (UPF).
UNIVERSITAT POMPEU FABRA (UPF).
Computational Approaches to Evolution
16/03/2014, 20/04/2014 - Berkeley USA
HOSTING PARTNER
QUEEN MARY AND WESTFIELD COLLEGE, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON (QMUL).
During the past decade, models and theories of evolution have been articulated which were inspired by computational considerations: examples are Valiant's evolvability, and the theory of mixability for the role of sex. The purpose of this workshop is to showcase and advance this strand of research, and also to expose it to the feedback and criticism of biologists and mathematicians. A second goal of the workshop is to highlight research questions in evolutionary biology which might benefit from computational insights and methodology, such as intractability proofs and novel algorithmic paradigms.
QUEEN MARY AND WESTFIELD COLLEGE, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON (QMUL).
During the past decade, models and theories of evolution have been articulated which were inspired by computational considerations: examples are Valiant's evolvability, and the theory of mixability for the role of sex. The purpose of this workshop is to showcase and advance this strand of research, and also to expose it to the feedback and criticism of biologists and mathematicians. A second goal of the workshop is to highlight research questions in evolutionary biology which might benefit from computational insights and methodology, such as intractability proofs and novel algorithmic paradigms.
“Agent-based models of creativity” Valldaura Green FabLab, Institute for Avanced Architecture of Catalunya (IAAC)
03/03/2014 - Catalunya (Spain)
HOSTING PARTNER
UNIVERSITAT POMPEU FABRA (UPF).
UNIVERSITAT POMPEU FABRA (UPF).
Workshop on ambiguity. “Ambiguity and the origins of syntax” (with E. Casademont)
02/03/2014 - Barcelona, Spain.
HOSTING PARTNER
UNIVERSITAT POMPEU FABRA (UPF).
AMBIGUITY AND THE DESIGN OF LANGUAGE.
The general objective of this workshop is to bring together several researchers working within different fields, such as experimental linguistics, artificial intelligence, categorial grammar, theoretical linguistics, sign languages and complex systems, in order to determine the importance of ambiguity in defining the design of language.
The central questions to be discussed in this workshop will be:
1. Are there any optimality considerations, related to the structure of lexicon or to general conditions on efficient communication, that favor the emergence of ambiguity?
2. What is the role of ambiguity in the origin of complex syntax?
3. What are the types of ambiguity displayed in sign languages?
4. At what grammatical level of representation are ambiguities resolved?
5. How is ambiguity treated in highly formalized grammatical
systems, such as Montague grammar and categorial grammar?
6. What is the role of prosody and gesture in avoiding ambiguity?
UNIVERSITAT POMPEU FABRA (UPF).
AMBIGUITY AND THE DESIGN OF LANGUAGE.
The general objective of this workshop is to bring together several researchers working within different fields, such as experimental linguistics, artificial intelligence, categorial grammar, theoretical linguistics, sign languages and complex systems, in order to determine the importance of ambiguity in defining the design of language.
The central questions to be discussed in this workshop will be:
1. Are there any optimality considerations, related to the structure of lexicon or to general conditions on efficient communication, that favor the emergence of ambiguity?
2. What is the role of ambiguity in the origin of complex syntax?
3. What are the types of ambiguity displayed in sign languages?
4. At what grammatical level of representation are ambiguities resolved?
5. How is ambiguity treated in highly formalized grammatical
systems, such as Montague grammar and categorial grammar?
6. What is the role of prosody and gesture in avoiding ambiguity?
Dagstuhl Seminar 14081 “Robots learning from experiences”
15/02/2014, 20/04/2014 - Wadern, Germany
HOSTING PARTNER
UNIVERSITAT POMPEU FABRAn (UPF)
The ability to exploit experiences is an important asset of intelligent beings. Experiences provide a rich resource for learning, solving problems, avoiding difficulties, predicting the effects of activities, and obtaining commonsense insights. Current robots do not in general possess this ability, and this is a decisive reason for the often perceived "lack of intelligence" of current robotic systems: they repeat mistakes, do not learn to anticipate happenings in their environment, and need detailed instructions for each specific task. Consider an everyday task of a service robot, such as grasping a cup from a cupboard and bringing it to a person sitting at a table. This task may occur in many variations and under unpredictable circumstances. For example, persons may sit at different sides of a table, a direct path to the table may be blocked, the table may be cluttered with various objects, hot water may be ready or not, the cup on the shelf may be upside-down, etc. It is clearly unfeasible to provide the robot with precise instructions for all contingencies at design time or to specify tasks with highly detailed instructions for each particular concrete situation which may arise. Hence without such knowledge, robot behaviour is bound to lack robustness if the robot cannot autonomously adapt to new situations.
How would the robot, for example, avoid pouring coffee into an upside-down cup? Based on experiences with multiple pouring actions, the robot will have formed a conceptualisation of all concomitant circumstances of successful pouring, for example to pour into a "container". The robot may not know the name of this conceptualisation but will know that it must be open on top, hollow, empty, etc. Similarly, the robot may have encountered upside-down objects before and hence be able to conceptualise the corrective action of turning an object to make it a usable container.
In this seminar, we want to bring together experts and scholars from the robotics, learning, and knowledge representation communities to discuss current approaches to make robots learn from experiences. Emphasis will be on the representation of real-world experiences and on exploiting experiences for autonomous acting in a changing or partially unknown environment. Hopefully, this will be a step toward the creation of the next generation of cognitive robotic systems. The programme of the seminar will consist of a selection of talks offered by the invited participants, based on abstracts which will be solicited, and on invited surveys addressing the seminar topic from different perspectives. There will be sufficient time after each talk for discussions. In addition, there will be dedicated group discussion sessions, as well as informal discussion sessions in the evenings on topics arising during the seminar. A seminar proceedings will be published summarizing the seminar.
UNIVERSITAT POMPEU FABRAn (UPF)
The ability to exploit experiences is an important asset of intelligent beings. Experiences provide a rich resource for learning, solving problems, avoiding difficulties, predicting the effects of activities, and obtaining commonsense insights. Current robots do not in general possess this ability, and this is a decisive reason for the often perceived "lack of intelligence" of current robotic systems: they repeat mistakes, do not learn to anticipate happenings in their environment, and need detailed instructions for each specific task. Consider an everyday task of a service robot, such as grasping a cup from a cupboard and bringing it to a person sitting at a table. This task may occur in many variations and under unpredictable circumstances. For example, persons may sit at different sides of a table, a direct path to the table may be blocked, the table may be cluttered with various objects, hot water may be ready or not, the cup on the shelf may be upside-down, etc. It is clearly unfeasible to provide the robot with precise instructions for all contingencies at design time or to specify tasks with highly detailed instructions for each particular concrete situation which may arise. Hence without such knowledge, robot behaviour is bound to lack robustness if the robot cannot autonomously adapt to new situations.
How would the robot, for example, avoid pouring coffee into an upside-down cup? Based on experiences with multiple pouring actions, the robot will have formed a conceptualisation of all concomitant circumstances of successful pouring, for example to pour into a "container". The robot may not know the name of this conceptualisation but will know that it must be open on top, hollow, empty, etc. Similarly, the robot may have encountered upside-down objects before and hence be able to conceptualise the corrective action of turning an object to make it a usable container.
In this seminar, we want to bring together experts and scholars from the robotics, learning, and knowledge representation communities to discuss current approaches to make robots learn from experiences. Emphasis will be on the representation of real-world experiences and on exploiting experiences for autonomous acting in a changing or partially unknown environment. Hopefully, this will be a step toward the creation of the next generation of cognitive robotic systems. The programme of the seminar will consist of a selection of talks offered by the invited participants, based on abstracts which will be solicited, and on invited surveys addressing the seminar topic from different perspectives. There will be sufficient time after each talk for discussions. In addition, there will be dedicated group discussion sessions, as well as informal discussion sessions in the evenings on topics arising during the seminar. A seminar proceedings will be published summarizing the seminar.
Darwin Day 2014: The major transitions in evolution: from the origin of life to the emergence of language
11/02/2014 - Auditorium 1, Helga Engs hus, Blindern, Oslo
HOSTING PARTNER
PARMENIDES STIFTUNG (PARMENIDES).
Lecture by Eörs Szathmáry:
Bayes, Hebb and Darwin: toward a truly Darwinian view of the brain.
PARMENIDES STIFTUNG (PARMENIDES).
Lecture by Eörs Szathmáry:
Bayes, Hebb and Darwin: toward a truly Darwinian view of the brain.
Neuroscience seminar series
09/02/2014 - University of York, United Kingdom
HOSTING PARTNER
UNIVERSITY OF SUSSEX (UOS).
UNIVERSITY OF SUSSEX (UOS).
NSF Workshop
05/01/2014 - "Language on the Move"
HOSTING PARTNER
UNIVERSITAT POMPEU FABRA (UPF).
Oral presentation at NSF Workshop USC.
UNIVERSITAT POMPEU FABRA (UPF).
Oral presentation at NSF Workshop USC.
Bio-inspired Computing
10/11/2013, 16/11/2013 - Snowdonia, UK
HOSTING PARTNER
Dr. Chrisantha Fernando
QMUL
As part of the TRUCE initiative, Dr Chrisantha Fernando is organising a "hackademia" retreat in Bio-inspired Computing.
The venue is the "Agatha Christiesque" Llanfendiagaid estate by the sea in Snowdonia this winter from 11th to 17th November 2013.
Topics include, but are not exclusively
- Evolutionary computation and evolutionary robotics
- Artificial creativity and curiosity
- Artificial Life
For more info visit the official website
Dr. Chrisantha Fernando
QMUL
As part of the TRUCE initiative, Dr Chrisantha Fernando is organising a "hackademia" retreat in Bio-inspired Computing.
The venue is the "Agatha Christiesque" Llanfendiagaid estate by the sea in Snowdonia this winter from 11th to 17th November 2013.
Topics include, but are not exclusively
- Evolutionary computation and evolutionary robotics
- Artificial creativity and curiosity
- Artificial Life
For more info visit the official website
International Summer School of Agent-based Models of Creativity
15/09/2013, 19/09/2013 - Cortona - Tuscani (Italy)
HOSTING PARTNER
Luc Steels from Universitat Pompeu Fabra, organizeda a summer school in Cortona - Tuscany (Italy), last July 2013.
This summer school centers on agent-based models of creativity, focusing on the domains of language and music. Musical creativity underlies musical composition, Jazz improvisation, musical performance, and active listening. Language creativity occurs whenever speakers go beyond canned phrases to express new meaning in novel ways and whenever hearers need to flexibly apply their linguistic knowledge and extend the conventions of their language to make sense of an utterance. The historical evolution of human languages shows us the cumulative effect of the many creative innovations that speakers and hearers have introduced and shared. Music and language rely on similar cognitive skills: auditory perception and very precise motor control, fast syntactic parsing and production, semantic processing, and interaction in dialog or collective performance. There is a consensus that music and language originated together in our human species and that they use similar neuronal structures.
Agent-based models are a powerful way to scientifically understand the computational basis of the enormously complex processes required for music and language. Moreover, once we have agent-based models, we can study systematically and precisely what kind of phenomena emerge at a collective level. For example, agent-based models allow us to ‘bring back to life’ older stages of a language and investigate what mechanisms and factors explain attested historical linguistic developments.
The school is intended for postdocs, lecturers and predocs with a background in computer science (artificial intelligence) or computational linguistics (corpus linguistics or natural language processing) and a strong interest in music and the origins of language. There will be background lectures that introduce concepts from biology, anthropology, psychology, music theory and linguistics that are helpful to understand the nature of creativity, the role and intimate relations between language and music, and the mechanisms underlying cultural evolution. It contains technical lectures on the fundamental computational components required for language processing and technical ateliers to learn how to set up evolutionary linguistics experiments. Participants have the opportunity to present their latest research in a poster session. The school also features artistic ateliers in which participants create new creative works and engage in performance.
The Cortona Summerschool promises to be an incredibly exciting event, taking place in the setting of the medieval town of Cortona (halfway between Rome and Firenze) in a monastery and Palazzone overlooking the hills and valleys of Tuscany.
Enjoy the picture of the beatiful location!
Luc Steels from Universitat Pompeu Fabra, organizeda a summer school in Cortona - Tuscany (Italy), last July 2013.
This summer school centers on agent-based models of creativity, focusing on the domains of language and music. Musical creativity underlies musical composition, Jazz improvisation, musical performance, and active listening. Language creativity occurs whenever speakers go beyond canned phrases to express new meaning in novel ways and whenever hearers need to flexibly apply their linguistic knowledge and extend the conventions of their language to make sense of an utterance. The historical evolution of human languages shows us the cumulative effect of the many creative innovations that speakers and hearers have introduced and shared. Music and language rely on similar cognitive skills: auditory perception and very precise motor control, fast syntactic parsing and production, semantic processing, and interaction in dialog or collective performance. There is a consensus that music and language originated together in our human species and that they use similar neuronal structures.
Agent-based models are a powerful way to scientifically understand the computational basis of the enormously complex processes required for music and language. Moreover, once we have agent-based models, we can study systematically and precisely what kind of phenomena emerge at a collective level. For example, agent-based models allow us to ‘bring back to life’ older stages of a language and investigate what mechanisms and factors explain attested historical linguistic developments.
The school is intended for postdocs, lecturers and predocs with a background in computer science (artificial intelligence) or computational linguistics (corpus linguistics or natural language processing) and a strong interest in music and the origins of language. There will be background lectures that introduce concepts from biology, anthropology, psychology, music theory and linguistics that are helpful to understand the nature of creativity, the role and intimate relations between language and music, and the mechanisms underlying cultural evolution. It contains technical lectures on the fundamental computational components required for language processing and technical ateliers to learn how to set up evolutionary linguistics experiments. Participants have the opportunity to present their latest research in a poster session. The school also features artistic ateliers in which participants create new creative works and engage in performance.
The Cortona Summerschool promises to be an incredibly exciting event, taking place in the setting of the medieval town of Cortona (halfway between Rome and Firenze) in a monastery and Palazzone overlooking the hills and valleys of Tuscany.
Enjoy the picture of the beatiful location!
“Evolutionary Cognitive Linguistics”
21/07/2013, 25/07/2013 - Bangor (University of Bangor)
HOSTING PARTNER
Hosting partner: UNIVERSITAT POMPEU FABRA (UPF).
Five-part lecture series together with Michael Spranger and Remi van Trijp at the Summer School in Cognitive Linguistics.
Evolutionary linguistics studies the strategies with which language users invent, adopt, and align the conceptual and linguistic systems underlying their language. These systems are undergoing constant evolution at all levels as clearly shown by the historical record. Evolutionary Cognitive Linguistics takes the perspective of cognitive linguistics with respect to the nature of the conceptual and linguistic system. This means that cognitive semantics is used for the conceptual level and construction grammar for the linguistic level. Evolutionary linguistics explores on the one hand empirical data from historical linguistics, language typology, and language use, as based on a growing set of corpora. On the other hand, it develops agent-based models of language change and validates possible strategies using computational simulations.
This course introduces this viewpoint on evolutionary linguistics, the tools that have been developed to explore it, and some of the key results obtained so far.
Hosting partner: UNIVERSITAT POMPEU FABRA (UPF).
Five-part lecture series together with Michael Spranger and Remi van Trijp at the Summer School in Cognitive Linguistics.
Evolutionary linguistics studies the strategies with which language users invent, adopt, and align the conceptual and linguistic systems underlying their language. These systems are undergoing constant evolution at all levels as clearly shown by the historical record. Evolutionary Cognitive Linguistics takes the perspective of cognitive linguistics with respect to the nature of the conceptual and linguistic system. This means that cognitive semantics is used for the conceptual level and construction grammar for the linguistic level. Evolutionary linguistics explores on the one hand empirical data from historical linguistics, language typology, and language use, as based on a growing set of corpora. On the other hand, it develops agent-based models of language change and validates possible strategies using computational simulations.
This course introduces this viewpoint on evolutionary linguistics, the tools that have been developed to explore it, and some of the key results obtained so far.
Evolution in Cognition (GECCO 2016)
20/07/2016 - Denver, Colorado (USA)
HOSTING PARTNER
EPFL and PARMENIDE co-organized the workshop, which was held a part of the 2016 GECCO in Denver. The goals of this workshop were to depict the current state of the art of evolution in cognition and to sketch the main challenges and future directions.
Keywords: Evolutionary Computation, Evolution, Cognition, Darwinian Neurodynamics, Neuronal Darwisnism, robotics.
EPFL and PARMENIDE co-organized the workshop, which was held a part of the 2016 GECCO in Denver. The goals of this workshop were to depict the current state of the art of evolution in cognition and to sketch the main challenges and future directions.
Keywords: Evolutionary Computation, Evolution, Cognition, Darwinian Neurodynamics, Neuronal Darwisnism, robotics.
