Announcement: Intelligent Machines Symposium

Can machines think? This has been a conundrum for philosophers for years, but the answer to this question also has real social importance. Modern robots can assist us in our homes and have human-like qualities. The internet provides us with personalized tools that learn from our behavior. It is therefore of more than academic importance that we learn to think clearly about the actual cognitive powers of computers, and what we can expect of them in the future.

On November 17, SNN organizes a one-day symposium entitled Intelligent Machines. During the day, invited research leaders in the field of machine learning and robotics will present examples of intelligence in machines and will discuss their views for the future. In addition, an overview is given of the research on machine learning in the Netherlands.

Invited Speakers

• Nicholas Roy, Professor of Robotics at the MIT in Cambridge Professor Roy will give a tutorial on machine learning methods for autonomous behavior.
• Kishore Papineni, Head of the Machine Learning Reseach Group of Yahoo! in New York Dr. Papineni will talk about machine learning applications at Yahoo! such as classification, exploration/exploitation, rare event prediction, and collaborative filtering.
• Nello Christianini, Professor of Artificial Intelligence at the University of Bristol Professor Christianini will tell us what intelligence is, using examples from single cells to swarm intelligence and data-driven AI.
• Edgar Körner, Director of the Honda Research Institute Europe in Offenbach. Professor Körner will talk about the cognitive robot systems that are developed by Honda.