Of Minds and Machines: What Artificial Intelligence Tells Us About Ourselves

With the explosive potential of Artificial Intelligence, we ask: How do society and culture shape A.I.? And how does A.I. impact our sense of humanity? Can A.I. help us understand better the human mind? One powerful aspect of human intelligence not well captured in current AI systems is visual mental imagery. DoSER is pleased to feature Dr. Maithilee Kunda, associate professor of computer science and engineering at Vanderbilt University, as the speaker of our annual Holiday Lecture, where she will highlight how algorithms for visual mental imagery can improve the performance and robustness of AI systems. In this presentation, Dr. Kunda will discuss the way mental imagery can advance the capacity of AI for physical reasoning (visualizing how objects move, slide, and fall), object recognition (picturing the hidden face of an object in view), and big data visualization (comparing a current data plot to composited versions of previously seen plots).