COLLOQUIUM
Functional emergence in adaptive devices: epistemology, evolutionary robotics, and computational creativity Peter Cariani Instructor at Harvard Medical School Friday, October 30^th, 2009 11:00 AM – 12:00 pm Fuller Labs 320 Abstract: A fundamental problem in cybernetics and artificial intelligence concerns how to make computers and robots open-ended in acquiring radically new functions (as opposed to recombining existing ones). In biological evolution this is known as the problem of functional emergence. We will present a general framework for adaptive and evolutionary robotic devices and discuss how novel informational functions can be created in systems that have the autonomy to construct or modify themselves. To the extent that a robotic system is capable of adaptively creating its own sensors and effectors, it attains a limited degree of epistemic autonomy vis-à-vis its designer and/or its genetic specifications. A striking example is Gordon Pask’s 1959 electrochemical assemblage that “evolved an ear.” We will discuss the methodological problem (how to recognize radical novelty) and the design problem (how to design and build open-ended, evolutionary machines). ________ Peter Cariani (B.S. 1978, biology MIT, 1978, M.S. 1982, Ph.D. 1989 systems science Binghamton University; www.cariani.com) has had the good fortune to be engaged in a wide variety of scientific and philosophical investigations: aging in nematodes, computer modeling of protein folding, theoretical biology/biological cybernetics, biosemiotics, epistemology of emergent functions in self-modifying systems, neural coding of pitch in the auditory system, auditory scene analysis, neural timing nets, and spinal cord regeneration. He is an Instructor at Harvard Medical School and teaches music perception and cognition at MIT and Tufts. He currently is investigating auditory-inspired neural timing nets for sound separation with Dr. Ramdas Kumaresan at the University of Rhode Island. He also serves as a scientific consultant for the John Templeton Foundation on projects related to emergence in biological systems and the material/neuronal basis of consciousness. Host: Micha Hofri Refreshments will be served
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