Seminar room, Abacus Building (U14)
Department of Informatics, Systems and Communication
Beyond the behavioristic trap and the human-like/human-level confusion in AI with the Minimal Cognitive Grid
Speaker:
Antonio Lieto, Associate Professor in Computer Science at the University of Salerno.
Abstract:
The remarkable achievements of contemporary artificial intelligence (AI) systems have spurred the hypothesis that their capacity to achieve human, or superhuman, performances across various tasks signifies that they have de facto acquired the underlying human competences required for the manifestation of such behaviors. This competence ascription, I argue, is however based exclusively on a behavioristic analysis of (some of) the output produced by such AI systems. And, as such, it is methodologically problematic, since the same output can be obtained by different inner mechanisms (as it is the case of current GenerativeAI and Deep learning systems when compared to biological neuronal structures and activities). In this talk I will show how, by using a tool known as Minimal Cognitive Grid (MCD), it is possible to avoid this behavioristic trap. In addition, I will show how the MCG allows us to compare and rank, in a non subjective way, different types of artificial systems based on their biological or cognitive plausibility.
Biography:
Antonio Lieto is an Associate Professor in Computer Science at the University of Salerno, DISPC and a Research Associate at the ICAR-CNR Institute in Palermo (Italy), Cognitive Robotics and Social Sensing Lab. His main fields of research are: Artificial Intelligence, Computational Cognitive Science and Human-Machine Interaction (with a focus on the following areas: Knowledge Representation and Reasoning, Semantic/Language Technologies, Cognitive Systems and Architectures, Persuasive Technologies). He is, since January 2024, a member of the scientific board of the Italian Association for Artificial Intelligence (AI*IA) and was Vice-President of the Italian Association of Cognitive Science (AISC, 2017-2022) and winner of the Outstanding BICA Research Award from the Biologically Inspired Cognitive Architecture Society (USA). Since 2020, he has been appointed ACM Distinguished Speaker on Cognitively Inspired Artificial Intelligence topics.
Contact person for this Seminar: Francesca Gasparini