BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:-//Memento EPFL//
BEGIN:VEVENT
SUMMARY:IC Colloquium: How does the brain create language?
DTSTART:20231127T161500
DTEND:20231127T173000
DTSTAMP:20260410T131648Z
UID:1db670be7555975ad3e1ead35afc446ee7b5460861a92f1d56f394db
CATEGORIES:Conferences - Seminars
DESCRIPTION:By: Christos Papadimitriou - Columbia University\nVideo of his
  talk\n\nAbstract\nThere is no doubt that all cognitive phenomena are the 
 result of the activity of neurons and synapses\, and yet there has been sl
 ow progress toward articulating a computational theory of how exactly thi
 s happens. I will introduce a simplified mathematical model of the brain\,
  which we call NEMO\, involving brain areas\, spiking neurons\, random syn
 apses and weights\, local inhibition\, Hebbian plasticity\, and long-range
  interneurons -- importantly\, there is no backpropagation in NEMO. Emerge
 nt behaviors of the resulting dynamical system -- established both analyti
 cally and through simulations -- include stable neural representations whi
 ch we call assemblies\, sequence memorization\, one-shot learning\, and un
 iversal computation. NEMO is also a software-based neuromorphic system tha
 t can be simulated efficiently at the scale of tens of millions of neurons
 \, emulating certain high-level cognitive phenomena\, such as parsing of n
 atural language.  I will describe our recent implementation of a basic l
 anguage acquisition system: a neural tabula rasa which\, on input consis
 ting of a modest amount of grounded sentences in any natural language\, is
  capable of learning a lexicon\, syntax\, semantics\, comprehension\, and 
 generation in the same language (all terms will be defined). Finally\, I w
 ill argue that experimenting with such brain-like devices\, devoid of back
 propagation\, besides providing insights into the way the brain works\, c
 an reveal novel and complementary avenues to learning\, and may end up adv
 ancing AI.\n\nBio\nChristos H. Papadimitriou is the Donovan Family Profess
 or of Computer Science at Columbia University. Before joining Columbia in 
 2017 he taught at Berkeley for 22 years\, and before that at Harvard\, MIT
 \, Athens Polytechnic\, Stanford\, and UCSD. He has written four widely us
 ed textbooks\, and hundreds of articles on algorithms and complexity\, and
  their applications to optimization\, databases\, control\, AI and robotic
 s\, economics and game theory\, the Internet\, evolution\, and recently th
 e brain. He was the founding Senior Scientist of the Simons Institute on t
 he Theory of Computing. He holds a PhD from Princeton and nine honorary do
 ctorates\, including from EPFL\, ETH\, and the Universities of Athens and 
 Paris Orsay\, while in 2014 the President of the Hellenic Republic named h
 im commander of the Order of the Phoenix. He is a member of the National A
 cademy of Sciences of the US\, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences\,
  the National Academy of Engineering\, the Academia Europaea\, and has rec
 eived the Knuth prize\, the Gödel prize\, IEEE's Babbage award\, IEEE's v
 on Neumann medal\, and IEEE's Women of the Edvac Computer Pioneer Award\,
  the IFORS von Neumann Theory prize\, and Technion’s Harvey award. He ha
 s also written three novels: “Turing\,” “Logicomix\,” and his late
 st “Independence.”\n\nMore information
LOCATION:BC 420 https://plan.epfl.ch/?room==BC%20420 https://epfl.zoom.us/
 j/68479498738
STATUS:CONFIRMED
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR