Walking before we run: how biology is inspiring progress in AI

Presented at Notacon 2 (2005), April 10, 2005, noon (60 minutes).

Computers may be outstanding tools for processing data, but they still require constant human oversight and perform poorly at many tasks that come naturally to even "lower" animals. Meanwhile our attempts at making computers do these sorts of tasks are giving biologists and psychologists new insight into how natural systems work.

This talk will show you examples of recent work in artificial intelligence that draws its inspiration from biology, and life sciences research that is informed by computer models. We hope to convince you that these are useful for everything from spam filtering to Mars rovers to diagnosing heart failure.


Presenters:

  • Eldan Goldenberg
    Sean Psujek is a doctoral candidate in the National Science Foundation sponsored program in Neuro-mechanical systems at Case Western Reserve University. He is currently investigating the role of development on the evolution of behavior. His educational background in electrical engineering and neurobiology help him see how one discipline can impact another.
  • Sean Psujek
    Eldan Goldenberg is a psychology graduate working towards a computer science PhD. His work uses evolution to generate and test robot controllers that are loosely modeled on the nervous system.

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