Seminar in cognitive science and artificial intelligence

Archív seminárov

Program na zimný semester 2019/2020

1. seminár

(Utorok 01.10.2019 o 0:00)

doc. RNDr. Martin Takáč, PhD. (Centre for Cognitive Science, Faculty of Mathematics, Physics and Informatics, Comenius University in Bratislava) , domovská stránka

From computational models of language and memory to digital humans

In this talk I'll present several computational models of phenomena related to language acquisition and knowledge representation in memory, which I have developed in the past years. I'll briefly show the application of this work in hyperrealistic embodied graphical simulations - digital personas.

2. seminár

(Utorok 08.10.2019 o 0:00)

prof. Ing. Igor Farkaš, Dr. (Centre for Cognitive Science, Faculty of Mathematics, Physics and Informatics, Comenius University in Bratislava) , domovská stránka

Towards understanding its own body in a cognitive robot

In order to interact intelligently with the world, the embodied robots must acquire a number of abilities, one of them being their own body schema. We will present several examples of simple models along this direction, that are based on artificial neural networks, taking advantage of known paradigms such as supervised, unsupervised and reinforcement learning. The ideas will be presented via selected tasks of motor learning, learning touch and proprioception and mapping between reference frames in a simulated humanoid robot. These examples will serve as motivation for potential research projects - theoretical, or based on computational modelling.

3. seminár

(Utorok 15.10.2019 o 0:00)

Mgr. Juraj Bánovský, PhD. (Centre for Cognitive Science, Faculty of Mathematics, Physics and Informatics, Comenius University in Bratislava)

What is so special about pedagogical interactions?

The focus of the talk will be the theory of natural pedagogy, which provides a framework for the understanding of cognitive mechanisms that enable the process of cumulative culture. Proponents of this theory argue that a specific human adaptation supports efficient social learning and transmission of cultural knowledge. The presentation will attempt to outline the character of cognitive mechanisms and representations that are involved in pedagogical interactions and it will try to link the ability to understand pedagogical intentions to some other domains of social cognition. On the basis of experimental evidence, we will evaluate arguments for this theory but also the main objections that have been raised by its critics. Finally, we will discuss the relevance of this research not just for the understanding of cultural transmission, but also in relation to a design of human-robot interactions that involve teaching and learning as well as in relation to some therapeutic strategies.

4. seminár

(Utorok 22.10.2019 o 0:00)

Mgr. Martin Marko, PhD. (Institute of Normal and Pathological Physiology, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Bratislava) , domovská stránka

Transcranial electrical stimulation of the brain for cognitive enhancement

The presentation provides a short introduction to transcranial electrical stimulation (tES) as a neuromodulation technique for cognitive enhancement. In the seminar, we will introduce several theoretical and methodological aspects of tES in behavioral research as well as our recent empirical findings indicating that tES of the left (pre)frontal and perisylvian brain regions can be used to modulate and enhance lexical-semantic cognition in healthy adults.

5. seminár

(Utorok 05.11.2019 o 0:00)

Mgr. Jakub Šrol, PhD. (Institute of Experimental Psychology, Slovak Academy of Sciences) , domovská stránka

Selected aspects of the research on cognitive biases and epistemically suspect beliefs in Slovakia

Research in the heuristics and biases paradigm has a long tradition of studying rational thinking using reasoning tasks specifically constructed to demonstrate that people systematically violate the rules of logic and probability when making judgments and decisions. A different domain of psychological research which addresses questions pertaining to human rationality is the study of epistemically suspect beliefs, i.e. the endorsement of paranormal claims, conspiracy theories, and pseudoscience. Importance of exploring such beliefs should be stressed both because of their surprisingly high prevalence and due to their relationship with various adverse real-life outcomes in the domain of health, political behavior, and rejection of science. It may seem at the first glance that acceptance of paranormal, conspiracy, and pseudoscientific beliefs has little to do with the type of rational thinking failure studied under heuristics and biases paradigm. And yet, recent research seems to suggest that similar underlying cognitive mechanisms may be implicated in these two domains of psychological research. In my talk, I will present selected findings of the research on cognitive biases and epistemically suspect beliefs that is taking place at Institute of Experimental Psychology of Slovak Academy of Sciences and will attempt to link the findings to the most recent trends in the two aforementioned domains of psychological study.

6. seminár

(Utorok 12.11.2019 o 0:00)

Dr. Roman Rosipal (Institute of Measurement Science, Slovak Academy of Sciences) , domovská stránka

Atomic Decomposition of Human EEG Oscillations in Medical Research

Frequency spectra and spatial sources of EEG oscillations are highly specific to individuals and may be manifested differently as functions of different interventions. However, most analyses of intervention effects on EEG oscillations use an approach based on standard frequency band powers measured at single electrodes. We have developed and applied a method that accurately and efficiently models individual EEG oscillations and tracks their activation over time or treatment conditions. In the talk, I will focus on basic principles of the approach and I will in detail discuss recent results which compare two specific models for EEG atomic decomposition, mainly the three-way parallel factor analysis (PARAFAC) model and its more flexible version represented by the Tucker model. These results are new and encouraging.

7. seminár

(Utorok 26.11.2019 o 0:00)

prof. MUDr. Daniela Ostatníková, PhD. (Institute of Physiology, Faculty of Medicine, Comenius University in Bratislava) , domovská stránka

Autism Spectrum Disorders – Targeting Pathomechanisms

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disability characterized by impairments in communication, social interaction, restricted interests and repetitive behaviour. The aetiology of autism is poorly understood. ASD is diagnosed four times more frequently in males than in females. Previous studies have revealed that autism may arise as a result of exposure to high concentrations of prenatal testosterone. Ratio of the second and the fourth digits (2D:4D) is usually used as a proxy for prenatal testosterone. Our research findings on children with autism diagnosed at Academic Research Centre for Autism are discussed with the reference to the “extreme male - brain” theory of autism.

8. seminár

(Utorok 03.12.2019 o 0:00)

prof. PhDr. Emil Višňovský, PhD. (Department of Philosophy & History of Philosophy, Comenius University in Bratislava) , domovská stránka

Basic Issues in the Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence

The phenomenon of artificial intelligence as the complex offspring of cognitive science and information technology (and inherently associated with "internetization", "digitalization", "virtualization" of reality, "robotization", etc.), is generally recognized as the key phenomenon of the contemporary human world having the potential not only to change the very nature of humanity itself but also to bring about one of its most serious existential risks (Open Letter on AI, 2015). For understanding the nature and value of AI, it is crucial to understand such concepts as human agency, intelligence (natural, general, weak, strong), consciousness, mind, thinking, free will, life, machine, technology, culture, etc., which fall under the competence of philosophy. Philosophy is the key for further development of AI (D. Deutsch). The area of the philosophy of AI has been developing (in parallels with cognitive science) since the historic 1956 DARPA conference, but the 1st academic synthesis has been provided by a textbook some 15 years ago (Russell & Norvig, 2002). Today the discussion of two groups of philosophical issues of AI can be distinguished: "internal" (stemming from Turing's problem of thinking machines and ending up with Bostrom's concept of super-intelligence) and "external" (starting from Minsky's "society of mind" and ending up with the ethical question of "good AI").

Program na letný semester 2019/2020

1. seminár

(Utorok 25.02.2020 o 0:00)

prof. Ing. Igor Farkaš, Dr. (Centre for Cognitive Science, Faculty of Mathematics, Physics and Informatics, Comenius University in Bratislava) , domovská stránka

Self-organization of perspective in/variant mirror neurons in a simulated robot

Mirror neurons in the brain are assumed to play an important role by mediating the link between an observed action and agent’s motor code, to provide action understanding “from inside”. One issue often neglected in modeling this link is the sensitivity of of the visual or motor neurons to the perspective (view). Mirror neurons in STS visual areas can be either perspective selective or invariant and the same variability was later also discovered in premotor F5 area in macaques, showing the existence of different types of mirror neurons regarding their perspective selectivity. We model this as an emergent phenomenom using the data from the simulated iCub robot, that learns to reach for objects with three types of grasp. The neural network model learns in two phases. First, the motor (F5) and visual (STS) modules are trained in parallel to self-organize modal maps using the corresponding data sequences from the self-perspective. Then, F5 area is retrained using the output from the pretrained STS module, to acquire the mirroring property. Using the optimized model hyperparameters found by grid search, we show that our model fits very well empirical observations, by showing how neurons with various degrees of perspective selectivity emerge in the F5 map.

2. seminár

(Utorok 24.03.2020 o 0:00)

RNDr. Kristína Malinovská, PhD. (Centre for Cognitive Science, Faculty of Mathematics, Physics and Informatics, Comenius University in Bratislava) , domovská stránka

Deep learning-based camera surveillance image classification

In our work we focus on surveillance camera image classification via deep learning. The primary challenge in this domain is the lack of well balanced labeled data. In search of methods to overcome this problem we explored transfer learning and semi-supervised learning paradigms. As our task we chose the detection of wearable objects, namely the backpacks. We created new annotations for the DukeMTMC-attribute dataset to overcome the discrepancies among the attributes. In this talk I will present the new DukeMTMC-backpack dataset and experimental results from both above-mentioned paradigms.

3. seminár

(Utorok 07.04.2020 o 0:00)

Dr. Ivan Vankov (Department of Cognitive Science and Psychology, New Bulgarian University) , domovská stránka

TBA

TBA

4. seminár

(Utorok 21.04.2020 o 0:00)

Mgr. Zuzana Husárová, PhD. a Ľubomír Panák (Pedagogická fakulta, UK a Universitaet fuer angewandte Kunst, Viedeň; & Vectary Inc.) , domovská stránka

Liza Gennart: a neural network for poetry composition

Liza Gennart is a fictional entity, a neural network creating poetry using GTP2 model. We will talk about the process of collecting data, working with GTP2 and selecting the outcomes. We are currently in the process of finalizing her collection of poetry called Literárne pokusy, which should be printed this year by Drewo a srd. Our project deals with the exploration of possibilities of machine learning and natural language processing through the language of poetry.

5. seminár

(Pondelok 11.05.2020 o 0:00)

Mgr. Ivor Uhliarik (Department of Applied Informatics, Faculty of Mathematics, Physics and Informatics, Comenius University in Bratislava) , domovská stránka

DPLL-based Fuzzy SAT Solver for Product Logic

We present the ongoing work on the implementation of a fuzzy satisfiability solver for product logic extended with the Monteiro-Baaz Delta operator and order operators. The motivation for involving the Delta-extension is the faithful interpretability of Łukasiewicz and Delta-extended Gödel logics in Delta-extended product logic, streamlining the transition to developing a unified solver for the three corresponding prominent t-norms.