Connectionists: Workshop: Creating an Artificial Brain, Sept 15, Torun, Poland

[wduch@phys.uni.torun.pl]

‘Creating an Artificial  Brain’
Organisers: W Duch & JG Taylor
Date: Sep 15, 2005, after ICANN 2005
Place: Nicolaus Copernicus University, Torun, Poland 

There is an upsurge of interest in the attempt to build an artificial brain.
This is for several reasons: 
i)	The enormous increase of computing power over the last decade or so; 
ii)	The increased understanding of the brain arising from developments in brain
imaging and single cell recordings and the associated use of probing
psychological paradigms; 
iii)	The increased demands from industry in terms of the creation of autonomous
agents with some form of cognitive powers, even up to that of ‘conscious’ machines. 
An important aspect of this general advance is that guidance is being taken from
the higher processing power of the brain, to help produce systems with a similar
or even greater power. In so doing an overlap is now growing between machine
intelligence per se and computational neuroscience, with projects being guided
by global brain processing as observed by neuroscience. Already several such
projects, using clusters of up to ten thousand nodes are being pursued; with the
largest such cluster of 150,000 nodes indicating what is now available. 

This workshop proposes to explore the issues raised in following such an avenue: 
1) The nature of the global brain itself, and the data relevant to help guide us
forward; 
2) The problems of the level at which to base any such approach, in terms of
neuron complexity, connectivity levels, number of separate modules, learning
rules, use of neuro-modulators, range of brain science data to be explained or
incorporated in any model; 
3) The problems of size and speed of the resulting computation, and whether to
aim for real-time or off-line learning and responses 
4) How to incorporate the faculties of attention, emotion and memory in an
input-output system able to develop concepts and to ultimately be able to ‘think
for itself’.

Applications are welcome for proposed talks in the workshop (which will last one
day). 

Please send suggestions (title, author co-ordinates and abstract) to the
organizers at john.g.taylor at kcl.ac.uk  and  ASWDuch at ntu.edu.sg.

We look forward to seeing you at the Workshop!

For details on the venue and organization please see: 
http://www.ibspan.waw.pl/ICANN-2005/workshops.html