A compilation of the Brains, Minds and Machines Summer Course 2014 projects is now available online.
March 9, 2015 - 2:00 pm
A compilation of abstracts from the student projects of the 2014 Brains, Minds, and Machines Summer Course has been published online as CBMM Memo 024.
The inaugural Center for Brains, Minds and Machines (CBMM) Summer Course was held at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, from May 29 through June 12, 2014. The school was attended by 25 graduate students and postdocs from around the world, and provided a "deep end" introduction to the...
March 3, 2015 - 4:00 pm
Max Tegmark
The Future of AI: Opportunities and Challenges
Abstract: I will give a report from the recent Puerto Rico conference on this topic (http://futureoflife.org/misc/ai_conference) and lead a discussion of what we can do today to help maximize the future benefits of AI while avoiding pitfalls.
Abstract: I will give a report from the recent Puerto Rico conference on this topic (http://futureoflife.org/misc/ai_conference) and lead a discussion of what we can do today to help maximize the future benefits of AI while avoiding pitfalls.
March 2, 2015 - 10:00 am
Prof. Shimon Ullman was awarded the 2015 Israel Prize in Mathematics and Computer Science Research. The Israel Prize committee cited Ullman for his “far-reaching contributions to artificial intelligence and general cognition, and particularly in the field of computer vision, and for his significant contribution to the development of the hightech industry in Israel.”
The Israel Prize is awarded to Israeli cisizens for displayed excellence in...
February 25, 2015 - 2:30 pm
DeepMind computer provides new way to investigate how the brain works.
By Elizabeth Gibney
CBMM Partner - DeepMind's research is the focus of a recent Nature article. The online article includes a video featuring interviews with Demis Hassabis and some of the DeepMind developers.
Both, the article and video, discuss the recently published Nature paper by DeepMind, titled "Human-level control through deep reinforcement learning," which...
February 24, 2015 - 4:00 pm
Jorie Koster-Hale, CBMM Thrust 4 (MIT, Saxe Lab), Moral Psychology Lab (Harvard U.)
Topic: Thinking in patterns: representations in the neural basis of theory of mind
Abstract: Social life depends on understanding other people’s behavior: why they do the things they do, and what they are likely to do next. These actions are just observable consequences of an unobservable, internal...
Abstract: Social life depends on understanding other people’s behavior: why they do the things they do, and what they are likely to do next. These actions are just observable consequences of an unobservable, internal...
February 11, 2015 - 6:30 pm
John Assad, Professor of Neurobiology at Harvard and Deputy Director of the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (...
10 new tenure-track positions at IIT
John Assad, Professor of Neurobiology at Harvard and Deputy Director of the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT), will discuss IIT’s new plan to recruit more than 100 tenure track scientists over the next decade, including a current call for 10 new tenure-track...
John Assad, Professor of Neurobiology at Harvard and Deputy Director of the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT), will discuss IIT’s new plan to recruit more than 100 tenure track scientists over the next decade, including a current call for 10 new tenure-track...
February 10, 2015 - 4:00 pm
Ed Boyden, CBMM Thrust 2: Circuits for Intelligence
*Talk was rescheduled to March 10th*
Topic: Progress on the CBMM challenge questions: What is there? What’s happening now? And why?
Abstract:
Ideally we would have maps of the molecular and anatomical circuitry of the brain, as well as of the dynamic activity of the brain, with sufficient detail to...
Topic: Progress on the CBMM challenge questions: What is there? What’s happening now? And why?
Abstract:
Ideally we would have maps of the molecular and anatomical circuitry of the brain, as well as of the dynamic activity of the brain, with sufficient detail to...
February 6, 2015 - 3:00 pm
This event is by invitation only.
February 5, 2015 - 4:30 pm
Initial proposals (300–1000 words) due March 1, 2015
The Future of Life Institute, based in Cambridge, MA and headed by Max Tegmark (MIT), is seeking proposals for research projects aimed to maximize the future societal benefit of artificial intelligence while avoiding potential hazards. Projects may fall in the fields of computer science, AI, machine learning, public policy, law, ethics, economics, or education and outreach. This 2015 grants...
January 21, 2015 - 5:45 pm
The Edge Foundation poses an annual questions to researchers and intellectuals. The Edge Question 2015 is “WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT MACHINES THAT THINK?”
CBMM Director Tomaso Poggio is one of the 191 contributors to have his response posted to Edge.org:
“Turing++” Questions
Recent months have seen an increasingly public debate taking form around the risks of AI (Artificial Intelligence) and in particular AGI (Artificial General Intelligence). A...
January 19, 2015 - 5:45 pm
Today’s New York Times article covers Prof. Ed Boyden’s new Expansion Microscopy research:
Expansion Microscopy Stretches Limits of Conventional Microscopes
by John Markoff
New York Times
“A new laboratory technique enables researchers to see minuscule biological features, such as individual neurons and synapses, at a nearly molecular scale through conventional optical microscopes.”
Click here to read the full article >
January 15, 2015 - 5:45 pm
by Ewen Callaway
Nature, Vol. 517, 254,
online January 09, 2015
January 15, 2015
doi:10.1038/nature.2015.16667
A recent article in Nature covers the Boyden Lab ExM research as presented by Prof. Ed Boyden at SfN 2014:
“Microscopes make living cells and tissues appear bigger. But what if we could actually make the things bigger?
It might sound like the fantasy of a scientist who has read Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland too many times, but the...