Connectionists: [publication and call for dialog] IEEE CIS Newsletter on Autonomous Mental Development, Spring 2015

[Pierre-Yves Oudeyer]

Dear colleagues,

I am happy to announce the release of the latest issue of the IEEE CIS Newsletter on Autonomous Mental Development (open access). 
This is the biannual newsletter of the computational developmental sciences and developmental robotics community, studying mechanisms of lifelong learning and development in machines and humans.

It is available at:

https://flowers.inria.fr/AMDNL-V12-N1.pdf

Featuring dialog:

=== “Will social robots need to be consciously aware?”
=== Dialog Initiated by Janet Wiles, with responses from Axel Cleeremans, Yasuko Kitano, Cornelius Weber and Stefan Wermter, Justin Hart and Brian Scassellati, Juyang Weng, Guy Hoffman and Moran Cerf.
Several dimensions of the question stand out. First, as we are very far from understanding what “consciousness” is, it appears that building robots capable of various forms of self- and other- awareness, and importantly how they can develop progressively these capabilities, can be very useful in the quest to unveil the underlying mechanisms. Second, as consciousness is a multiscale complex systems, multiple approaches and perspectives need to be taken in this process of robot building. Third, when one looks at applications, it is the function, and not the nature, of consciousness which becomes the relevant angle of analysis, and several ethical questions arise.

Call for new dialog:

=== "Representational redescription: the next challenge?"
=== New dialog initiated by Stéphane Doncieux
It has long been known in AI that having a good representation is key for machines to solve complex problems. However, so far good representations have been pre-programmed by engineers. What technical approaches could we imagine to allow machines to select, and even more important to find, new spaces of representations? Are techniques like deep learning general enough for realising such a challenge for lifelong learning robots? Do we need other approaches such as Darwinian mechanisms operating in the brain, like in neural Darwinism? Those of you interested in reacting to this dialogue initiation are welcome to submit a response by October 30th, 2015. 
length of each response must be between 600 and 800 words including references (contact pierre-yves.oudeyer at inria.fr).

You will also find news about the latest activities of the AMD Technical Committee and the ICDL-Epirob 2015 conference, and a call for candidates to become the new editor of the newsletter. 
As I have been editor of the newsletter for around 8 years, and I have now the AMD TC Chair duty, it is now time for other ideas and energies to take the lead of the newsletter.
I take this opportunity to thank Fabien Benureau for his help as editorial assistant.

Let me remind you that previous issues of the newsletter are all open-access and available at: http://www.cse.msu.edu/amdtc/amdnl/

I wish you a stimulating reading!

Best regards,

Pierre-Yves Oudeyer,

Editor of the IEEE CIS Newsletter on Autonomous Mental Development
Chair of the IEEE CIS AMD Technical Committee on AMD
Research director, Inria
Head of Flower project-team
Inria and Ensta ParisTech, France
http://www.pyoudeyer.com
https://flowers.inria.fr
http://www.poppy-project.org
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