scienceofintelligence.de

Stefan Leutgeb, “Hippocampal Computations in Support of Spatial Navigation and Working Memory”
2024-02-01 10:00 - 11:00 (Europe/Berlin) | MAR 2.057
Stefan Leutgeb is Professor of Neurobiology at University of California San Diego. Currently a fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin with his research on neural computations in real brains and in artificial systems. More details to follow.

This talk will take place in person at SCIoI.
Photo by Alina Grubnyak on Unsplash.

Verena Hafner (Science of Intelligence), “Tool Use and Agency in Artificial Systems”
2024-01-25 16:00 - 17:00
More details to follow.

This talk will take place in person at SCIoI (room 2.057).

Oren Forkosh (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem), "Behavior, Personality, and Affective States of Freely Behaving Groups of Mice and Other Animals"
2024-01-25 10:00 - 11:00
Behavior, Personality, and Affective States of Freely Behaving Groups of Mice and Other Animals
In recent years, the study of animal behavior in neuroscience has seen a significant shift towards more naturalistic and less intrusive methods. It is under these conditions that the true spectrum of animal behavior can be exhibited, free from the artificial constraints and stressful conditions often imposed by traditional laboratory settings. In this talk, I will discuss the interplay between behavior, personality, and affective states as measured in our “social boxes”; These systems allow for the continuous and unattended tracking of groups of mice over extended periods and can automatically recognize and catalog over 100 distinct behaviors. A four-day experiment, for example, can potentially replace a myriad of classical tests typically used in neuroscience. Our system can also discern and record a ‘behavioral fingerprint’ for each mouse. These fingerprints reveal consistent traits—personalities—that are not only distinct between individuals but also persist over time. In addition, by examining the interplay between behavior and personality across multiple timescales – from seconds to days – we can gain insights into the affective states of these animals. Finally, expanding our research to other species, including bats, cows, and even humans, allows us to develop a general understanding of behavior and personality. This comparative strategy holds promise for developing a ‘universal translator’ of behavioral and personality patterns, paving the way for new comparative studies. These insights into the personalities and emotions of both humans and animals have the potential to significantly enhance our knowledge of the neurobiological underpinnings of behavior.
—Oren Forkosh is a PI at the Lab for Computational Neuroscience- Behavior, Personality and Cognition at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The Forkosh lab uses machine-learning to understand personality, behaviour, hierarchy, communication, social learning, and much more, in order to make the world happier for animals and people alike.

POSTPONED: Richard McElreath, "The Cultural and Ecological Nature of Intelligence"
2024-01-18 16:00 - 17:30
Abstract:
How do we reconcile the extraordinary success of the human species with the apparent stupidity of people and organizations? How can we understand the transformation of humans from foraging apes to urban clerks, without any appreciable change in physiology? No one has definitive answers to these questions, but we begin to answer them by appreciating the ways in which populations think over cultural and ecological time scales.

This talk will take place in person at SCIoI.

Photo by ALAN DE LA CRUZ on Unsplash.

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Asieh Daneshi (Science of Intelligence), “Behavioral Contagion in Human and Artificial Multi-Agent Systems”
2024-01-18 10:00 - 11:00
In this talk, Asieh will explore the dynamics of decision-making and risk-taking within social contexts and how everyday decisions, often laden with potential negative outcomes, are influenced not only by individual judgment but significantly by the surrounding social environment. Her research employs the “Balloon Analogue Risk-Taking” experiment in a controlled setting applying VR-technology in order to investigate the impact of dynamic social interactions on individual risk assessment. Various aspects, such as the effect of peers on risk perception, group dynamics in decision-making, and the influence of social norms on risk-taking behaviors are part of her study.
By observing how individuals in a group adapt their decisions based on others’ actions and outcomes, she aims to understand the balancing act between individual decision-making and group conformity. This research explores decision-making in a constantly changing social environment, offering new insights into how group dynamics can lead to either more risk-taking or conservative behaviors. The findings promise to enhance our understanding of the complex interplay between personal psychology and group influence.

This talk will take place in person at SCIoI.

Rebecca Laxzarides (Science of Intelligence), “Adaptivity in Social Interaction”
2023-12-14 16:00 - 17:30 | MAR 2.057

Aravind Battaje and Vito Mengers, "Principles at Play: What is Intelligence?"
2023-12-14 10:00 - 11:00 | MAR 2.057
What is intelligence? We delve into the collaborative efforts at SCIoI, where we aim to understand intelligence through the identification of commonalities. Inspired by ongoing research and historical parallels, we present candidate principles, inviting the audience to contribute insights and discuss their alignment with ongoing projects. This talk marks a step towards refining our understanding of intelligence, emphasizing the pivotal role principles play in shaping our collective reflections and influencing future research trajectories.

This talk will take place in person at SCIoI.

Martin Rolfs (Science of Intelligence)
2023-11-30 16:00 - 17:30 | MAR 2.057

Eva Wiese (TU Berlin), “Social Perception and Attention in Human-Robot Interaction: Bottom-Up and Top-Down Influences”
2023-11-30 10:00 - 11:00 | MAR 2.057
Eva Wiese is the professor for Cognitive Psychology and Ergonomics at TU Berlin. More details to follow.

This talk will take place in person at SCIoI.
Photo by Possessed Photography on Unsplash,

Marc Toussaint (Science of Intelligence), "Planning-as-Inference vs. Optimization"
2023-11-16 16:00 - 17:30 | MAR 2.057
This talk will take place in person at SCIoI (room 2.057).

Berlin Science Week 2023 – David Bierbach, “From Chaos to Order: How Large Collectives Benefit From Being in a Critical State Between Complete Disorder and Strong Structure”
2023-11-09 18:30 - 19:30
SCIoI member David Bierbach showcases the RoboFish demonstrator and invited the audience to explore collective behaviour and its connection to robotics and artificial intelligence. Inspired by the rules that shape fish and bird swarms, the project that underlies this demonstrator explores the complexities of social interactions. The robotic fish integrates itself into groups of live fish and enable thus the study of social processes within groups – something that is not possible without Robo Fish! In this demonstrator, you can steer the Robo Fish and test how well you would act as a “real” fish. The Robo Fish holds immense research potential, fostering collaborations with biologists, roboticists and physicists.

Pawel Romanczuk (Science of Intelligence), “Collective Behavior – Quid Est?”
2023-11-09 16:00 - 17:30 | MAR 2.057
Collective behavior is a generic term used across many different fields and context, and thus it can refer to very different kind of collective phenomena exhibited by animal and human collectives, such as collective locomotion, collective decision making or behavioral contagion processes. In this lecture, I will try to give a classification of different types of collective behaviors highlighting potential similarities and differences from a theoretical point of view. Further, I will provide a brief overview on how they are typically modeled. Finally, I will discuss ambiguities on what is actually meant e.g. by collective decision making, and how caution should be executed when adopting some idealized models from statistical physics to model real-world phenomena.

This talk will take place in person at SCIoI (room 2.057).

Daniela Vallentin (MPI for Biological Intelligence), “Neural Mechanisms of Vocal Learning and Production in Songbirds”
2023-11-09 10:00 - 11:00 | MAR 2.057
Daniela Vallentin is a neuroscientist and currently the Lise Meitner Reseach Group Leader at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Intelligence, heading the ‘Neural Circuits for Vocal Communication’ Group whose objective is to explore the neural circuits driving skilled motor learning and orchestrating the coordination of precise movements by working with songbirds. Due to the homology of brain structures in birds and mammals, studying the neural mechanisms of vocal learning and coordination in songbirds has the potential to reveal general principles of motor circuits in other animals, including humans.

This talk will take place in person at SCIoI.
Photo by Joshua J. Cotten on Unsplash

Intercluster Science Slam at Berlin Science Week
2023-11-02 19:30 - 21:00
On 2 November we will be back: the seven Berlin Excellence Clusters are organizing another science slam for the Berlin Science Week 2023. Last year’s great success demonstrated what a fun event it is and how much interest there is in the research areas of the seven Excellence Clusters. Make sure not to miss Berlin’s brightest scientists on the stage!
Early career scientists from the seven Clusters present their research projects in an engaging and entertaining way, as they compete for the honor of best Science-Slammer. As always: the louder the cheers, the safer the win! You can expect a potpourri of knowledge; from application-oriented mathematics, artificial intelligence, catalysis/green chemistry, and neuroscience, to active materials, and even to liberal democracy and world literature. Show up, support your favorites, and get smarter!
At our Science Slam, scientists try everything to entertain their audience. The sky is the limit when it comes to what’s possible. Costumes, props, movies, power-point presentations or other experimental setups – everything is allowed. The only limit is time – every slammer will have ten minutes at most. And the audience will decide which presentation is best through clapping and enthusiastic cheers!

Jonas Frenkel and Uroš Petković (Science of Intelligence), “Social Responsiveness and Its Effects on Learning in Human-Human and Human-Robot Interaction”
2023-11-02 10:00 - 11:00 | MAR 2.057
More details to follow.

This talk will take place in person at SCIoI.
Photo by Katja Anokhina on Unsplash.

Svetlana Levit, “Analyzing Human Physical Reasoning and Strategy Exploration on Physical Puzzles”
2023-10-26 10:00 - 11:00 | MAR 2.057
More details to follow.

This talk will take place in person at SCIoI.
Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash.

Airbound: Sensing Collective Futures
2023-10-19 17:00 - 2023-11-09 19:00 | CLB BERLIN, Prinzenstraße 84.2, Berlin, 10969, Germany
From molecule to atmosphere: the global climate crisis and the possible futures of our coexistence will be decided by means of air. We are »airbound« – bound through air.
How can we create a sense of what is coming? And what will connect us in the future?
The exhibition »Airbound« features climate fictions and speculative everyday scenarios – developed in an open process by collaborators from society, science, and design. Through speculative installations, »Airbound« provides space to discuss urgent geopolitical issues. At stake are the contested knowledge of the climate, the destructive use of joint resources, and the injustices that are inherently connected. Air is critically bound to these – as collective, active, and intelligent material.
The interactive exhibits problematize the technical promises of climate engineering and life under the pressure of ever-increasing emissions. They present designerly and research-based approaches to what air carries with it and to the intimate processes of breathing. What kind of air would we inhabit once climatic tipping points have been passed? In which ways do local approaches and other technologies offer hope? What new (breathing) practices and routines are we developing as individuals and collectives?
The exhibition and all accompanying events and workshops are free of charge.
The exhibition rooms are wheelchair accessible.

Events & Workshops
Oct 19
Vernissage
Oct 20
Public guided tour
(in German)
Oct 21
Speculative Workshop, CLB Berlin
(in German, registration required)
Nov 04
Speculative Workshop, Museum für Naturkunde
(in English, registration required)
Nov 09
Finissage

Jens Krause (Science of Intelligence), "Collective Behaviour and Collective Memory"
2023-10-19 16:00 - 17:30 | MAR 2.057
Abstract:
The idea that animal groups can have collective memories has been raised a number of times in different contexts. The information centre hypothesis predicts that communal roosts allow for information exchange between individuals so that successful foragers, for example, can be followed by others to promising sites. A different approach to collective memory has been taken in the field of collective behaviour where it has been shown that information regarding predation risk, for example, can be structurally encoded in the network topology of the interacting individuals. While the information centre hypothesis is empirically well supported, the full information can be carried by a single individual which questions the description as a “collective” memory. Structurally encoded information, on the other hand, meets the criterion of a collective process but empirical studies have demonstrated encoded information only for as long as the risk was present which may not satisfy the criterion of a memory. This raises the question of whether collective processes exist that can encode information regarding environmental states or events even after they are no longer directly observable. In this talk I will present data from project 41 which suggest collective wave formation in sulphur mollies as a potential example of a collective memory.

This talk will take place in person at SCIoI (room 2.057).

Richard Schweitzer (Science of Intelligence), "Preregistration in Open Science: What, why, and how (a live tutorial)"
2023-10-19 10:00 - 11:00 | MAR 2.057
Abstract:
A tutorial on Open Science practices with a focus on pre-registration, going through the process step-by-step, including a live experimental data collection.

This talk will take place in person at SCIoI.
Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash.

Rasha Abdel Rahman (Science of Intelligence), “How Intelligent Is Visual Perception?”
2023-10-12 16:00 - 17:30 | MAR 2.057
Abstract:
Visual perception is shaped by the input from our physical environment and by expectations derived from our sensory experience with the visual world. But is what we see also influenced by higher cognitive capacities such as memories, language, semantic knowledge or (true or false) beliefs? And if so, what are the consequences on how we perceive and understand the visual and social world around us? Can visual perception be described as a creative process that is guided, sometimes mislead or biased, and, arguably more often, augmented by top-down influences from higher-level cognition? These questions pertain to the long-standing debate around the penetrability of perception. I will discuss evidence for effects of cognition on perception from basic low-level to complex high-level processing of colors, objects, faces and symbols, as well as effects on the potential of these stimuli to be consciously perceived. The incorporation of additional sources of information may enhance the efficiency and flexibility of visual perception not only in humans, but also in artificial neural networks that do not typically incorporate top-down information. In perspective, this may enhance resource and data efficiency, flexible adaptations to different contexts, and mutual understanding between human and artificial agents in the service of successful interactions.

This talk will take place in person at SCIoI (room 2.057).

Conor Heins, “Collective Behavior From Surprise Minimization”
2023-10-05 10:00 - 11:00 | MAR 2.057
Abstract:
Collective motion is a familiar sight in nature; groups of distinct, self-propelled individuals appear to move as a coherent whole, exhibiting a rich behavioral repertoire that ranges from directed movement to milling to disordered swarming. Biological collective motion is an emergent phenomenon that is the result of self-organization, whereby macroscopic patterns arise from decentralized, local interactions among constituent components (e.g., individual fish in a school). Preminent models of collective motion describe individuals in the group as self-propelled particles, subject to a combination of self-generated motion and “social forces” that depend on the state of neighboring particles. Here we introduce a fundamentally new approach to modelling collective movement in animal groups based on active inference, a cognitive framework that casts behavior as consequences of a single imperative: to minimize surprise. We demonstrate that many empirically-observed collective phenomena, including cohesion, milling and directed motion, naturally emerge when considering individual behavior as the consequence of active Bayesian inference — this emerges without ever explicitly building behavioral rules or goals into individual agents. We show that active inference can naturally recover and generalize the classical notion of social forces in agent-based models of collective motion. By analyzing the parameter space of the belief-based model, we reveal non-trivial relationships between the beliefs of individuals and group properties like collective polarization and the probability of occupying different behavioral regimes. We also explore how individual beliefs about uncertainty influence the accuracy of collective decision-making. Finally, we show how, in this framework, agents can readily update their generative model over time, resulting in groups that are collectively more sensitive to external fluctuations and encode information more robustly.

This talk will take place in person at SCIoI.
Photo kinldy provided by Shintaro Shiba.

Science of Intelligence Fair 2023
2023-09-22 09:00 - 19:00
The first conference and exhibition of the Cluster of Excellence Science of Intelligence (SCIoI) in Berlinwas held in September 2023. Leading experts from science and politics, as well as journalists and the broader public came together to discuss the diverse facets of intelligence research. From individual, social, and collective principles of intelligence to the ethics of AI, the event offered a display of interdisciplinary collaboration and advancements from within the cluster, shedding light on the challenges of developing intelligent technologies. In guided tours through the accompanying exhibition that were held throughout the day, attendees got into exchange with the scientists and learned about the most recent research on intelligence straight from the labs.
Find in-depth information on the event here.

Olaf Hellwich (Science of Intelligence), “State Vectors of Computer Vision at Time T=Now. Perspectives, Particles and Predictions”
2023-07-20 16:00 - 17:30 | MAR 2.057
We take varying perspectives to the state of the art in Computer Vision: e.g. from SCIoI, disciplinary and interdisciplinary viewpoints. Sampling from the multi-modal state vector distribution, we inspect currently exciting developments: e.g. the integration of computer vision and language processing, the use of biological principles in synthetic systems, and self supervision. Generalizing from the examples, we dare to extrapolate societal impact, e.g. w.r.t. the application of artificial intelligence, defense questions and the future of evolution.

Lisa-Kristin Richter, "Model Training for Facial Recognition of Raccoons"
2023-07-20 10:00 - 11:00 | MAR 2.057
Machine learning tools have already been used to identify individual animals such as but not limited to pandas, black bears, cows and dogs. These tools can help to improve the quality of non-invasive wildlife monitoring and enhance the information on individual animal behaviour as well as on behaviour within social networks of the animals (Lynn 2019; Schofield et al. 2019).
Raccoons (proctorloco) are considered an invasive species in Germany that has been introduced to many parts of the world outside of their native range in North America.
In order to train a model for facial recognition of raccoons, we collected 7812 pictures of 133 individuals. After manual selection for quality focusing on sharpness, image detail and light, 111individuals with 4000 pictures remain in the dataset. The individuals were pictured in more than 10 different facilities and locations with different lights and angles. From this baseline dataset, one data set using bounding boxes is created for training and one dataset using masks is also created for training. This is done to keep the influence of the background minimal.
Finally, this data is used to train different pre-trained deep learning models from Image Net, namely ResNet50, VGG19 and Mobile Net. While model training parameters like batch size, number of epochs, learning rate scheduler, picture augmentation techniques and more are being varied.
Challenges arise from the time and computer resources needed for training.Currently, training is done via Google Colab, which disconnects after a certain time. Furthermore, input on dataset preprocessing, model selection, possible combination of models and variation in parameters would be very helpful.
This talk will take place in person at SCIoI.
Photo by Lukas Stoermer on Unsplash

Santiago Paternain, "Safe Learning for Dynamical Systems and Control"
2023-07-13 10:00 - 11:00
Abstract:
Reinforcement learning has shown great success in controlling complex dynamical systems. However, when training a policy, most algorithms only consider a single objective function. While this may suffice in virtual domains, physical systems must satisfy a set of operational constraints, with safety being of crucial importance. It is natural to express these problems as constrained optimization problems since weighted combinations of different rewards are not guaranteed to find a solution that satisfies all the requirements. Furthermore, these examples are not contrived, and safety-constrained reinforcement learning is a vital area of research that needs to be tackled.
After establishing the need to tackle safety-constrained reinforcement learning, I will shift my focus to solving these generally non-convex problems. I will discuss different approaches that exploit duality theory to pave the way towards algorithms for general constrained reinforcement learning. In particular, I will discuss that (i) despite their non-convexity these problems have zero duality gap, (ii) a state-augmented approach that does not guarantee convergence to an optimal policy but, it guarantees optimality and (iii) a safe policy-gradient theorem that allows us to consider constraints beyond time-averages.
This talk will take place in person at SCIoI.

Photo by Jeswin Thomas on Unsplash

Michael Taborsky, "The Evolution of Social Behaviour"
2023-06-29 10:00 - 11:00
Abstract:
The social structure and behaviour of organisms is highly divergent. How can this stunning diversity in nature be explained? I will argue that a few key principles are responsible for the evolution of social behaviour, with all its simple and complex manifestations. Organisms compete for resources. As survival and reproduction require resources and only fiction knows a land of milk and honey, different individuals inevitably compete due to their own diverging fitness interests. To succeed in the competition for resources, organisms may either “race” to be quicker than others, “fight” for privileged access, or “share” their efforts and gains. In this talk, I attempt to show how the ecology and intrinsic attributes of organisms select for each of these strategies. My special emphasis will be on the evolution of cooperation, with examples including a range of different taxa. Here the crucial question is how the conflict of fitness interests can be mediated to allow competitors for resources to unite and benefit from collective goal pursuit.
This talk will take place in person at SCIoI.
Photo by Torsten Dederichs on Unsplash

Jörg Raisch (Science of Intelligence), "Efficient Consensus over Wireless Channels & and its Use in Traffic Automation Problems"
2023-06-22 16:00 - 17:30 | MAR 2.057
Consensus algorithms are routinely employed in a variety of multi-agent scenarios. They require that each agent iteratively evaluates a multivariate function of its neighbours’ information states. If a wireless communication channel is used, this is typically implemented through protocols (such as TDMA – Time Division Multiple Access) that avoid superposition of transmitted signals by assigning each transmitter its own (time) slot.However, consensus only requires that agents know a function of their neighbours’ information states, not the individual information states. Hence one may ask whether using the famous Kolmogorov-Arnold representation theorem might allow to exploit the channel’s superposition property to drastically reduce communication effort. Kolmogorov-Arnold essentially states that every continuous multivariate function can be expressed via univariate functions and addition. If channel superposition were to be considered as addition, all agents could consequently simultaneously transmit a suitably preprocessed version of their information state, with receiving agents locally postprocessing the received superposition signal.
We will explain for two widely used consensus types (average consensus and max-consensus) why in practice the application of Kolmogorov-Arnold is notquite as straightforward. For both consensus types, we will suggest alternative approaches, which make use of the channel’s superposition property whilehandling non-ideality effects such as time-varying unknown channel coefficients. By allowing all agents to transmit at the same time, the required number oftransmission slots is considerably reduced. In the second part of the talk, we will demonstrate how average and max-consensus algorithms can be used in various traffic automation scenarios. This includes platooning, distributed automatic lane changing, and distributed automation of traffic intersections.

Mohsen Raoufi (Science of Intelligence), From State Estimation to Collective Estimation, and from Individuality to Complexity in Swarm Robotic Systems
2023-06-22 10:00 - 11:00
Using swarm optimization algorithms as heuristic solutions in various engineering problems, including the state estimation of nonlinear systems, has been an inspiration to me for my SCIoI project. We started our project by studying the “Wisdom of Crowds” effect, i.e. the notion that the average of many imperfect estimations, under the right conditions, can potentially yield a perfect estimation. However, achieving an accurate estimation in a distributed manner requires individuals to finely balance many tradeoffs, e.g. the exploration-exploitation trade-off. In addition to discussing a few of these tradeoffs in my talk, I will demonstrate how the interaction of agents leads to more complex behavior, particularly when the connectivity of the communication network is limited. For instance, this limitation results in the emergence of “echo-chambers” in the collectives.
In the second part, I will talk about the inter-individual variations we observed during real robot experiments with Kilobots. This side project opened up a new dimension to the complexity of the individual and collective behaviors in swarm robotic systems.
This talk will take place in person at SCIoI.
Photo by Alina Grubnyak on Unsplash

Lange Nacht der Wissenschaften 2023 - Exzellentes Pub Quiz
2023-06-17 20:00 - 23:00
Together with the other six Berlin Clusters of Excellence, we are organizing a quiz night: the Excellent Pub Quiz! This event is expected to attract team players, puzzle enthusiasts, and science fans alike, offering an excellent opportunity to enjoy a summer evening in a relaxed atmosphere while putting your knowledge to the test. The Quiz will put your knowledge to the test with questions drawn from various research areas of the Berlin Clusters of Excellence. No synapse will be left unused as you delve into the depths of diverse scientific subjects. From physics to biology, mathematics to sociology, the quiz covers it all, ensuring that there will be something for everyone. So, gather your teammates, think of a team name, and win one of the great prizes!

Lange Nacht der Wissenschaften 2023 - The wandering eye: An experiment on visual search
2023-06-17 11:30 - 22:00
We constantly move our eyes, approximately three times per second, and even more if we search for something. We do this to place individual objects into the region where we see with highest resolution, the fovea. But can you still find a target if you can not see with your fovea? Or what about if you only see with the fovea, and not in the periphery? Come find out! The demonstration will be given by Nicolas Roth.
