BICA*AI

Manifesto

We are the Young Scientists of the World. We hereby are launching a fierce attack on BICA: the prestigious domain of research known to many as “Biologically Inspired Cognitive Architectures”. Let there be no doubt worldwide that we have the courage to unite our Task Forces in changing the way people do research in this field for good. We are the future scientific generation. Join us on April 21-24 to change the world for the better.

Synopsis

A three-day meeting of early-career researchers (students, interns, postdocs, trainees, research staff and faculty, including young scientists from around the world) with world-recognized leading experts in the field of BICA. This School will develop future world leadership in the field by young scientists for years to come. The friendly atmosphere of excitement and opportunity will help us to initiate partnership and collaboration using roundtables, breakout groups and discussion panels. Working language of the School is English.

Blurb

Biologically Inspired Cognitive Architectures (BICA) are computational frameworks for building intelligent agents that are inspired from biological intelligence. Biological intelligent systems, notably animals such as humans, have many qualities that are often lacking in artificially designed systems including robustness, flexibility and adaptability to environments. At a point in time where visibility into naturally intelligent systems is exploding, thanks to modern brain imaging and recording techniques allowing us to map brain structures and functions, our ability to learn lessons from nature and to build biologically

inspired intelligent systems has never been greater. At the same time, the growth in computer science and technology has unleashed enough computational power at sufficiently low prices, so that an explosion of intelligent applications from driverless vehicles, to augmented reality, to ubiquitous robots, is now almost certain. The growth in these fields challenges the computational replication of all essential aspects of the human mind (the BICA Challenge), an endeavor which is interdisciplinary in nature and promises to yield bi-directional flow of understanding between all involved disciplines.

Topics At-A-Glance

• Models of perception, cognition and action
• Emotionally intelligent BICA
• Character reasoning and narrative intelligence
• Active learning in artifacts
• Believable autonomous social actors
• Secure authentication of the mind
• Benchmarks, metrics, tests and challenges for BICA
• Fundamental theoretical questions in BICA research
• The roadmap for the BICA Challenge
• Future plans for fundings and collaboration

Historical Perspective

FIERCES on BICA originates from, and continues the spirit of the Early Career Researcher Workshop Track (ECRT) sponsored by Elsevier and held at the MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) in Cambridge (Boston), Massachussetts, USA, in November 2014 as a part of the international conference BICA 2014. It is expected that the present continuation of that great initiative will become a regular annual event, complementing the BICA conference series. In fact, the next Fierces on BICA event is planned for 2017 (we will keep the acronym, while switching “First” for “Second”).

Among Confirmed Speakers

• Antonio Chella
• David Vernon
• Paul F.M.J. Verschure