Workshop on Intelligence and Abilities (SCIoI/Human Abilities – Centre for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, HU Berlin)
2021-03-22 14:00 - 2021-03-23 18:00 (Europe/Berlin)
This two-day workshop, co-organised by the Berlin-based Science of Intelligence Cluster and Human Abilities – Centre for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, brings together philosophers and cognitive scientists to discuss the relationships between intelligence and abilities in humans, nonhuman animals, and artificial systems. Is intelligence best seen as an ability? How to understand cognitive abilities and skills to start with? How can we investigate abilities and intelligence philosophically and scientifically?
The workshop will take place on 22 and 23 March from 2–6:30pm (CET), and the speakers are:
Ellen Fridland (London)
Romy Jaster (Berlin)
Dimitri Coelho Mollo (Berlin)
Carlotta Pavese (Cornell)
Martin Rolfs (Berlin)
Barbara Vetter (Berlin)
The workshop will take place on Zoom, with social gatherings on Wonder. To register, please write an email to communication@scioi.de.
For questions, feel free to contact the organisers, Dimitri Coelho Mollo (dimitri.coelhomollo@hu-berlin.de) and Sanja Dembić (sanja.dembic@hu-berlin.de).

Programme (all times in CET):
March 22 (Monday)
14:00-15:00: Dimitri Coelho Mollo: Unifying the sciences of intelligence: abilities and representation
15:00-15:15: Break
15:15-16:15: Martin Rolfs: Delineating abilities of an active visual system
16:15-16:30: Break
16:30-17:30: Barbara Vetter: The epistemology of ability
17:30-17:45: Break
17:45-18:30: Roundtable with all workshop speakers

March 23 (Tuesday)

14:00-15:00: Romy Jaster: A Challenge for Ability Accounts of Practical Intelligence
15:00-15:15: Break
15:15-16:15: Ellen Fridland: Practical Intentions, Action Schemas, and Strategic Control in Skill
16:15-16:30: Break
16:30-17:30: Carlotta Pavese: Intelligence, Regress, and Novelty.
17:30-17:45: Break
17:45-18:30: Roundtable with all workshop speakers
Full programme with abstracts can be downloaded here.

Oliver Brock (Science of Intelligence): 5 Things I Think About (Out Loud)
2021-04-15 16:00 - 17:30
Abstract:
Oliver Brock will talk about these five things:
1) Is intelligence non-decomposable?
2) Does intelligence require multiple computational paradigms?
3) To neuroscience or not to neuroscience?
4) A principle of intelligence?
5) It’s all about the prior
Each section will be followed by Q&A&D.
The Zoom Link will be sent the day before the lecture. (Contact communication@scioi.de for specific questions)

TEDxHUBerlin, Talk by Dimitri Coelho Mollo: “Getting Serious About the “I” in AI”
2021-04-17 13:00 - 18:00
The event, called “AI: A Tough Love” explores the connection between the calculating machine and the human being, and attempts to understand in what ways do the worlds of humans, nature, and technology collide.
Throughout the afternoon, six great speakers will take a snapshot of today’s AI world to reflect on the current state of affairs, to present AI as an innovation accelerator, to take a look at possible threats or to give a creative outlook on how our future can be shaped by Machine Learning, Big Data & Co.
In particular, Dimitri will focus on how understanding intelligence in all its aspects is central for the progress of AI, calling for a unifying approach that brings together neural networks, symbolic processing, and robotics.
Check out the website for tickets and further info: www.tedxhuberlin.de

European Funding for Bottom-up Research: The European Research Council (ERC) and the Marie Skłodowska Curie Actions (MSCA)
2021-04-22 10:00 - 11:00
On Thursday 22 April 2021 EU Officers from the four institutions of the Berlin University Alliance (Edda Nitschke, FUB; Caroline Schleier, HUB; Elke Gehweiler, TUB; Mara Klein, Charité) will visit SCIoI and introduce European funding opportunities for bottom-up research. The focus will be on the grants offered by the European Research Council (ERC) as well as on selected funding opportunities available through the Marie Skłodowska Curie Actions (MSCAs).
With its three funding lines Starting Grant, Consolidator Grant and Advanced Grant the ERC funds innovative basic and pioneering research of single principle investigators and their teams (funding up to 2.5 Mio EUR for up to five years). The sole evaluation criterion is the scientific excellence of the project and of the PI. The ERC Synergy Grants address teams of 2-4 outstanding researchers who want to work together on a project at the interfaces between established disciplines that promises to make substantial scientific progress (funding up to 10 Mio EUR for up to six years).
The MSCAs fund bottom-up research and innovation projects. Transnational mobility is a basic principle of the MSCA, as well as the participation of the non-academic sector. The MSCA Doctoral Networks provide funding to consortia of European institutions to support research-driven structured training of early career researchers. Postdoctoral researchers can apply for a Postdoctoral Fellowship to receive funding for their own research project.
The presentation will include information on the requirements and guidelines for a successful application and will give an overview of the support services offered by the four institutions.
For more information, write to us here.

Photo by Bill Oxford on Unsplash

SCIoI at Girls' Day/Mädchen-Zukunftstag: Meet a Vision Scientist - Einblicke in die Wahrnehmungsforschung (Lynn Schmittwilken)
2021-04-22 13:30 - 14:30
Girls’ Day/Mädchen-Zukunftstag, happening digitally on 22 April, provides school girls around Germany with a day of informative activities aimed at guiding them in their career choices, focusing on career paths where women are usually underrepresented. SCIoI member Lynn Schmittwilken talks to school-aged girls about being a vision scientist.
The event is in German.
“In unserer Veranstaltung möchte ich euch persönliche Einblicke in meine Arbeit als visuelle Wahrnehmungsforscherin geben. Für viele von uns ist das Sehen einer der wichtigsten Sinne, um uns im Alltag zurechtzufinden. Wie allerdings die optischen Informationen in unserer Umwelt über unsere Augen ins Gehirn gelangen und dabei zu unserem sehr lebendigen Abbild der Umwelt führen, ist auch in der Wissenschaft noch immer ein ungelöstes Mysterium. Um diese Frage zu beantworten, greifen einige Wahrnehmungsforscher*innen auf optische Täuschungen zurück. In unserer Veranstaltung werden wir uns deshalb gemeinsam eine Reihe von optischen Täuschungen anschauen, die für meine Arbeit interessant sind. Dabei werden wir erörtern, warum optische Täuschungen für die Wahrnehmungsforschung interessant sind und inwiefern sie uns Einblicke in das visuelle System geben. Darüber hinaus freue ich mich darauf, mich mit euch darüber auszutauschen, wie man eine Wahrnehmungsforscherin werden kann und wie mein Arbeitsalltag als Wahrnehmungsforscherin aussieht.”
Interested school-aged girls should register here.

Oliver Brock (Science of Intelligente): 5 Things I Think About (Out Loud), Part 2
2021-04-22 16:00 - 17:30
Abstract:
Oliver Brock will continue exploring about these five things:
1) Is intelligence non-decomposable?
2) Does intelligence require multiple computational paradigms?
3) To neuroscience or not to neuroscience?
4) A principle of intelligence?
5) It’s all about the prior
The Zoom Link will be sent the day before the lecture. (Contact communication@scioi.de for specific questions)

Peter Dayan, (Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics), "Peril, Prudence and Planning as Risk, Avoidance and Worry"
2021-04-29 16:00 - 18:00 | On Zoom
Speaker: Peter Dayan, Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, https://www.mpg.de/12309357/biologische-kybernetik-dayan
Hosted by Henning Sprekeler; moderated by Robert Tjarko Lange
Peril, Prudence and Planning as Risk, Avoidance and Worry
Risk occupies a central role in both the theory and practice of decision-making. Although it is deeply implicated in many conditions involving dysfunctional behavior and thought, modern theoretical approaches to understanding and mitigating risk in either one-shot or sequential settings, which are derived largely from finance and economics, have yet to permeate fully the fields of neural reinforcement learning and computational psychiatry. I will discuss the use of dynamic and static versions of one prominent approach, namely conditional value-at-risk, to examine both the nature of risk avoidant choices, encompassing such things as justified gambler’s fallacies, and the optimal planning that can lead to consideration of such choices, with implications for offline, ruminative, thinking. This is joint work with Chris Gagne.

The Zoom Link will be sent the day before the lecture. (Contact communication@scioi.de for specific questions)

Martin Rolfs (Science of Intelligence), "Looking for Action in Perception"
2021-05-06 16:00 - 17:30 | On Zoom
Abstract
Actions affect perception directly and in multiple ways, exerting their influence (1) by modifying parts of the external world, (2) through internal processes accompanying movement preparation, and (3) through the sensory consequences of moving the sensory surface itself (i.e., in vision, the retina). To understand these influences, psychology and neuroscience have long recognized the necessity to study perception in active observers. Despite this recognition, the consequences of moving the sensory surface itself (point 3 above) have been considered a nuisance, to the extent that perceptual processing — across sensory modalities — needs to be attenuated or suppressed during movement execution. I will discuss recent evidence that studying the immediate sensory consequences as a functional element of perceptual processes is a fruitful approach that may lead to a different understanding of the mechanisms underlying perception. The goal is to develop a set of hallmarks of active perceptual systems, which may represent different degrees to which actions are ingrained into the perceptual processing architecture. I will propose a recipe for testing this proposal in active observers suggesting, perhaps counterintuitively, that a deeper understanding of perception requires shifting the focus of perceptual research to motor control and action kinematics. PS: Most of these ideas will be half-baked at the time of presentation.
The Zoom Link will be sent the day before the lecture. (Contact communication@scioi.de for specific questions)

Marc Toussaint (Science of Intelligence), "Do We Need Reasoning?"
2021-05-20 16:00 - 17:30 | On Zoom
Reasoning (or planning, rational decision making) seems a core aspect of intelligence — but what exactly does that mean? If we observe clever behavior in an animal, can we claim it is based on reasoning? And doesn’t the success of deep RL show us that we (as engineers) do not need reasoning? I’ll discuss reasoning as a means to represent behavior and what the point of that might be.
The Zoom Link will be sent the day before the lecture.

Antje Nuthmann (University of Kiel), “Real-World Scene Perception and Search From Foveal to Peripheral Vision”
2021-05-27 16:00 - 18:00
It is a commonly held assumption that the fovea is where the interesting action occurs. To scrutinize this assumption, we conducted a series of experiments that addressed the following question: How important are the different regions of the visual field for gaze guidance in everyday visual-cognitive tasks? Following on from classic findings for sentence reading, I will present key results from various experiments in which observers had to search for a target within static or dynamic images of real-world scenes. Each scene image contained exactly one target, which was either contextually relevant (e.g., “Look for the apple”) or not (e.g., “Look for the ‘T’”). Gaze-contingent scotomas were used to selectively deny information processing in the fovea, parafovea, or periphery. Overall, the results suggest that foveal vision is less important and peripheral vision is more important for scene perception and search than previously thought. The importance of foveal vision was found to depend on the specific requirements of the task. Finally, when observers searched for a static target in dynamic scenes, only their very first saccade was guided by task-irrelevant motion in extrafoveal and peripheral vision.

(Photo © Jürgen Haacks, Uni Kiel)
The Zoom Link will be sent the day before the lecture.

Pawel Romanczuk (Science of Intelligence), “Is Intelligence Critical? Can Magnets Teach Us Anything About Brains and Swarms?”
2021-06-03 16:00 - 17:30
Abstract:
More than three decades ago, it was proposed that certain natural systems can be viewed as self-organized critical systems, which self-tune themselves to special regions in parameter space close to so-called critical points, where the behavior of a system exhibits a qualitative change at the macroscopic scale, i.e. it undergoes a phase transition. Over the years, theoretical research has shown that various aspects of collective computation become optimal at criticality and it has been conjectured that distributed information processing systems in biology such as the brain or animal groups should operate at, or close to criticality. In this lecture, I will give a brief introduction to the concept of criticality, give a short overview over some selected theoretical studies on optimal information processing at criticality, as well as empirical evidence for the ‘criticality hypothesis’ from neuronal dynamics and collective behavior of animals, including some of our recent work on the topic. I will close with a critical discussion on criticality in the context of collective information processing.
The Zoom Link will be sent the day before the lecture.

LNDW 2021: David Bierbach, "ROBOFISH: Mit einem Fischroboter das Schwarmverhalten verstehen"
2021-06-05 18:30 - 19:00
ROBOFISH: Mit einem Fischroboter das Schwarmverhalten verstehen (in German, at 6:30pm and at 9:30pm)

Um das Gruppenverhalten von Fischen zu studieren, haben wir unter Beteiligung der FU, HU und TU sowie des Leibniz-Instituts für Gewässerökologie und Binnenfischerei (IGB) einen Roboterfisch gebaut. Dieser ist einem Guppy nachempfunden und wird von lebenden Guppys als Artgenosse akzeptiert. Mit dem Roboter ist es nun möglich, ein Leittier in eine Guppy-Gruppe „einzuschleusen” und gezielt zu steuern. Dank einer weltweit einzigartigen, doppelten Videoaufnahmetechnik kann der Roboter in der Gruppe stets lokalisiert werden. Er kann nicht nur über die Tastatur gesteuert werden, sondern nutzt die Positionsinformation der lebenden Fische, um seine Schwimmrichtung automatisch anzupassen – verhält sich also interaktiv, ähnlich wie ein lebender Guppy.  Dr. David Bierbach, Mitarbeiter der HU und Mitglied im Excellence-Cluster „Science of Intelligence“ (www.scienceofintelligence.de) wird in einem spannenden 30-minuten Vortrag den Robofish leicht verständlich für alle Altersgruppen präsentieren. Der Vortrag findet zweimal statt, um 18:30 und um 21:30.
The Zoom Link for this talk will be available on 5 June on this page, so stay tuned!

LNDW2021: SCIoI's Science Pub Quiz
2021-06-05 19:30 - 22:00
The SCIoI Science Pub Quiz (7:30–ca.10pm)
Join us for a fun evening with Science of Intelligence (SCIoI) and sign up for this special edition of the Science Pub Quiz, organized with SCIoI!
What is intelligence? Do beets float in water? Why should you pet your basil? We will be joined by Aravind Battaje and Lynn Schmittwilken, SCIoI researchers in the fields of neurosciences and robotics, who will tell us about their latest research and answer your most burning questions about brains and how computers can perceive the world. The event will be held in English and German and is aimed at scientists and non-scientists alike – so sign up for an evening of scientifically verified fun!
We are looking forward to seeing you!
REGISTER NOW, either individually or as a team, on www.scipubquiz.de/register

LNDW2021: Ralf Kurvers and Pawel Romanczuk: "Collective Intelligence or Collective Stupidity? Swarm intelligence in fish and humans"
2021-06-05 22:00 - 23:00
Collective Intelligence or Collective Stupidity? Swarm intelligence in fish and humans (5 June, 10pm)
In this talk, Pawel Romanczuk and Ralf Kurvers from our Excellence Cluster will explore swarm intelligence in fish and humans, investigating the role of single individuals and social interactions in collective decisions, also exploring when collectives make good decisions, and when they go wrong.
The Zoom Link for this talk will be available on 5 June on this page, so stay tuned!

Talk: Manuel Cebrian, Max-Planck Institute for Human Development: "Time-critical Social Mobilization"
2021-06-10 16:00 - 17:30
Title: Time-Critical Social Mobilization
Abstract: This seminar explores the physical, behavioral, and computational limits of crowd-assembly for problem-solving. I follow several real-world experiments where we utilized social media to mobilize the
masses in tasks of unprecedented complexity. From finding red weather balloons to locating thieves in distant cities to reconstructing shredded classified documents, the potential of crowdsourcing is real, but so are exploitation, sabotage, and asymmetric incentives that can undermine the power of crowds.
Bio: Manuel Cebrian is a Max Planck Research Group Leader with the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, where he develops computational and network preparedness against emergent threats. Previously, Manuel was a researcher at MIT, CSIRO, and the University of California San Diego. His scientific research draws on approaches from the physics of complex systems, data-driven simulation, and operations research.
The Zoom Link will be sent the day before the lecture. (Contact communication@scioi.de for specific questions)

Jose Hernandez-Orallo (Valencia/Cambridge), "The Generality of Natural and Artificial Intelligence: Task Difficulty as the Elephant in the Room"
2021-06-17 10:00 - 11:00 | On Zoom
Abstract: Understanding and recreating intelligence is possibly the biggest scientific challenge of our time. Evolution has produced organisms that are highly specialised for some cognitive tasks, whereas others present what has been called general intelligence, with humans identified as the paragon. Artificial intelligence (AI), despite decades of efforts to achieve generality, is still specialised. It is a major research question to disentangle the notion of general intelligence, by clearly determining what generality is and how it can be measured for individuals rather than populations. Under limited resources, we must overhaul the classical yet misleading interpretation of general intelligence as ‘success in all sorts of situations’ and introduce a new view of generality as ‘comprehensive performance up to a level of difficulty’. The degree of generality then refers to the way an agent’s capability is distributed as a function of task difficulty, according to environmental and cognitive pressures. This dissects the notion of general intelligence into two non-populational measures, generality and capability. We interpret and apply these measures with humans, non-human animals and AI systems. The choice of the difficulty function now plays a prominent role in this new conception of generality, which brings a quantitative tool for shedding light on long-standing questions about the evolution of general intelligence and the evaluation of progress in Artificial General Intelligence.
Hosted by Dimitri Coelho Mollo
The Zoom Link will be sent the day before the lecture. (Contact communication@scioi.de for specific questions)

Rebecca Lazarides (Science of Intelligente), “Learning in Social Interaction – Emotions, Motivation and Adaptive Learning Support”
2021-06-17 16:00 - 17:30
ABSTRACT: Central theories of learning in human agents emphasize that the quality of instruction and interaction between agents is of high importance for effective knowledge transfer. On the other side, within-agent characteristics such as a certain level of emotion and motivation is required to participate in social interactions. Consequently, the interplay between characteristics of social interactions and characteritics of learners influences learning in a way that might speed up knowledge transfer. In the PI lecture, key principles of learning in humans from the perspective of research in motivational and intructional psychology are reviewed and possible transfers to synthetic agents are discussed. Challenges of understanding human learning in social interaction will be illustrated in an overview of related project in SCIoI that address questions of emotions in social learning.

The Zoom Link will be sent the day before the lecture. (Contact communication@scioi.de for specific questions)

Kou Murayama (Universität Tübingen), “A Reward-Learning Framework of Knowledge Acquisition: How We Can Integrate the Concepts of Curiosity, Interest, and Intrinsic-Extrinsic Rewards.”
2021-06-24 16:00 - 17:30 | On Zoom
Recent years have seen a considerable surge of research on interest-based engagement, examining how and why people are engaged in activities without relying on extrinsic rewards. However, the field of inquiry has been somewhat segregated into three different research traditions which have been developed relatively independently — research on curiosity, interest, and trait curiosity/interest. The current talk sets out an integrative perspective; the reward-learning framework of knowledge acquisition. This conceptual framework takes on the basic premise of existing reward-learning models of information seeking: that knowledge acquisition serves as an inherent reward, which reinforces people’s information-seeking behavior through a reward-learning process. However, the framework reveals how the knowledge-acquisition process is sustained and boosted over a long period of time in real-life settings, allowing us to integrate the different research traditions within reward-learning models. The framework also characterizes the knowledge-acquisition process with four distinct features that are not present in the reward-learning process with extrinsic rewards — (1) cumulativeness, (2) selectivity, (3) vulnerability, and (4) under-appreciation. The talk describes some evidence from our lab supporting these claims.
Hosted by Rebecca Lazarides
Speaker website: https://koumurayama.com/people.php
The Zoom Link will be sent the day before the lecture. (Contact communication@scioi.de for specific questions)

Rasmus Rothe, PhD (Merantix), “How To Build a (Deep Tech) Startup”
2021-07-01 10:00 - 11:00 | On Zoom
Abstract: Rasmus Rothe is Co-Founder at Merantix, the Artificial Intelligent Venture Studio. In this talk he will give insight into how a deep tech startup is built via ideation, incubation and scaling, and the specifics and challenges of working with technology AI in the process.
BIO: Rasmus Rothe is the co-founder and CTO of Berlin-based Merantix, the world’s first venture studio for AI, co-initioator of the AI Campus Berlin, the leading AI community hub in Berlin, and a renowned deep learning researcher. He has published over 15 academic papers with more than 1000 citations on deep learning while attending Oxford, Princeton, and ETH Zurich, where he received his Ph.D and launched a face recognition service with 150m+ users. In 2019, he was featured on Forbes “30 under 30”. Rasmus is a founding board member of the German Association of AI, devising and implementing the national AI strategy in close cooperation with the German government.
The Zoom Link will be sent the day before the lecture.

Guillermo Gallego (Science of Intelligence), “Current Status of Event-Based Vision Research”
2021-07-01 16:00 - 17:30
Abstract:
Event-based cameras, also called neuromorphic cameras or silicon retinas, are novel vision sensors that mimic functions from the human retina and offer potential advantages over traditional cameras (low latency, high speed, high dynamic range, bandwidth savings, low power, etc.). My previous talk was about event-based cameras for Spatial AI. In this talk I will provide an overview of how event-based cameras are becoming more and more widely spread in multiple applications (monitoring, tracking, counting, recognition, etc.).
The Zoom Link will be sent the day before the lecture. (Contact communication@scioi.de for specific questions)

Dimitri Coelho Mollo (SCIoI), “Modelling Intelligence: The Good, the Bad, and the Plural”
2021-07-15 10:00 - 11:00
Abstract: I argue that artificial intelligence research has been both fuelled and hindered by the use of ‘model tasks’, that is, tasks the solution of which are taken to be sufficient for, or at least indicative of intelligence. Before AI proper, cybernetics explored model tasks involving basic real-time and world-involving action control aimed at the maintenance of homeostasis, an approach echoed more recently by the embodied AI movement. Logicist AI, in contrast, took as model tasks for intelligence the solution of abstract problems, such as theorem-proving and proficiency in combinatorially complex games, chess having pride of place. Connectionist AI – including the current deep learning wave – despite privileging model tasks tied to learning from ‘experience’, shares this focus on abstract, disembodied behaviours as key to intelligence, with particular effort being done in language processing, categorisation, and combinatorially complex games, such as Go. Reliance on model tasks has led to considerable progress in solving those specific tasks, but against expectation they did not lead to theoretical insights about the nature of intelligence in general, and how to build it. This outcome, I argue, is in part due to the failure of recognising the limited scope of model tasks, as well as the abstractions and idealisations of real-world intelligent behaviour that they embody. All mainstream frameworks in AI research, in brief, focus on circumscribed, idealised models of intelligent behaviour, those for which the respective approaches tend to generate cumulative progress and satisfactory solutions. Such models, however, abstract or idealise away important features of intelligence, and, if unchecked, close off potentially rewarding paths of research. Bringing to the fore the limitations tied to such model task choices, as well as the abstractions and idealisation involved in each, I argue, opens the way for a more integrative and plural approach to AI.
The Zoom Link will be sent the day before the lecture. (Contact communication@scioi.de for specific questions)

Heiko Hamann (Science of Intelligence), “Group Performance and Scalability in Collective Systems”
2021-07-15 16:00 - 17:30
Abstract:
Scalability can be challenging in groups of collaborating agents, such as animals, robots, or computers. While a small group may work efficiently together, a bigger group may be slowed down due to increased needs to communicate and synchronize or due to other scarce shared resources. We go through a number of examples for observed system performance over system size and find common features. Based on these findings, we define a simple mathematical model that catches these main features and can generically be applied to different domains, such as robotics, computing, and sensor networks or possibly even human groups. We end by speculating a bit of what might be common to all of these systems and what might be the underlying drivers for the limits of scalability.
The Zoom Link will be sent the day before the lecture. (Contact communication@scioi.de for specific questions)

Opening of the Humboldt Labs Exhibition "After Nature"
2021-07-20 10:00 - 18:00
Come see our videos and materials at the exhibition “After Nature” at the brand-new Humboldt Forum!
Entry is free for everyone, so we hope to see you all there on 20 July! Tickets for the exhibitions will be available from 13 July 2021. You can book your ticket online or via +49 30 99 211 89 89, or visit www.humboldtforum.org.
Address: Schlossplatz, 10178 Berlin

Workshop for Early-Career Researchers: “How To Review in Interdisciplinary Research”
2021-08-31 14:00 - 17:00
One major part of the scientific workflow is the publication of scientific results. An essential step on the way to the published item is the peer-review process, in which other scientists evaluate submitted work. Their views, recommendations and critique often strongly influence the decision of whether a submitted item is published or not. We assume that these peers are themselves experts on the topic they are reviewing, and while this is most often true for reviews made on items that lay within a certain discipline, more and more research is done across the boundaries of scientific disciplines, which produces the publication of research items, that may contain parts from vastly different scientific areas.
In addition, many disciplines have their own “styles” when it comes to the review process.
So, what to do as a reviewer when asked to assess a scientific work, that lies only partially within your own area of expertise? This workshop will tackle this question through presenting experts’ views from different scientific areas, a general discussion stage as well as a DIY part in which we will work on a guideline for interdisciplinary peer-reviews.
Registration deadline: 16 August 2021
Organizers: Pia Bideau, David Bierbach, Andrzej Banburski

SCIoI Open Day
2021-09-16 14:00 - 17:00
Interested in SCIoI’s activities? Want to know more about how to apply for a research position at SCIoI?
At this all-digital event, prospective applicants as well as other interested persons can visit the cluster, have a (virtual) look around the spaces and facilities, meet researchers and staff, and get a general feel for the place.
Click here to attend, Thursday 16 September between 2 and 5pm!

Tina Klüwer (Science of Intelligence), AI Director Science & Startups
2021-09-23 10:00 - 11:00 | On Zoom
Through a talk followed by a discussion and Q&A, AI Director at Science & Startups Tina Klüwer will explore the joint programmes and resources offered by Berlin’s universities to those wishing to successfully start and develop a company, also explaining what support is available.
BIO:
Dr. Tina Klüwer is a recognized expert, manager and technical ambassador for the topic of Artificial Intelligence and its implementation in business.
Currently, she leads the AI project of Science & Startups, the network of startup services of the Berlin universities and the Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin.
Before starting the project, she was founder and CEO of parlamind GmbH, a company for automation in customer service through AI and language processing. After the successful exit of the business, she led its four sister companies as technical director. Previously she worked as a researcher at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), the Bonn University and Freie Universität Berlin, Germany for over ten years. She received her PhD thesis in computational linguistics from Saarland University.
Tina Klüwer is board member of the German KI Bundesverband (Federal Association for AI), Chairwoman of the Technological Sovereignty Advisory Council of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, as well as part of the coordination group for AI Standardization by Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWI) and DIN. She was also an expert member of the German Bundestag’s two-year Enquete Commission on Artificial Intelligence.

The Zoom Link will be sent the day before the lecture.

Tim Landgraf (Science of Intelligence), “The Hidden Shallows of Explaining Deep Models”
2021-10-14 16:00 - 17:30
Abstract:
In the cognitive-, behavioral- or neuro-sciences we often match a computational model to observations and then, analyzing the model, hope to find results that generalize to the underlying system. With deep neural networks (DNNs) quite powerful function approximators are available that can be fitted to huge data sets, accelerated by cheap hardware and elaborate software stacks. It seems tempting to use DNNs as a default model but how do we analyze their behavior? DNNs are essentially black boxes: although we can write down the network function, it does not tell us anything about the features it extracts or about the rules animals employ when interacting with one another. In recent years, a new field has emerged and proposed a variety of methods to explain deep neural networks. In my talk, I will (1) introduce you to some ideas that explanation algorithms are based on, (2) show how quantifying their performance on proxy tasks can be misleading, (3) provide an intuition why some popular proponents of these algorithms won’t work in deep networks, (4) will introduce you to a new dataset generator that enables us to create challenging problems to test and evaluate explanation methods and (5) discuss why we need extensive (and expensive) user studies to investigate whether explanation methods actually provide additional information that would be available from the model’s outputs alone. I hope to stimulate a discussion about the use-cases for which “explain a DNN to discover the hidden rules of my study system” may work, and in which it may not.
The Zoom Link will be sent the day before the lecture.

Mental Health in PhD Students. The Role of Graduate Schools, the Integration of International Students and Impostor Syndrome
2021-10-19 10:00 - 18:00 | On Zoom
Scholar Minds, in collaboration with Science of Intelligence and the Berlin School of Mind and Brain, would like to invite you to a special conference on the topic “Mental Health in PhD students: The role of graduate schools, the integration of international students and impostor syndrome”. The event will take place online on October 19th from 10AM-6PM. The event will be held in English and is free of charge.
The event will incorporate keynotes, workshops, and hackathons to work on improving the current situations for early career researchers. The conference was initiated by Scholar Minds & the Berlin Cluster of Excellence “Science of Intelligence” and is a collaborative project of several mental health initiatives across Germany.
We are pleased to present a keynote lecture by Gordon Feld who will give an overview of how Germany needs to address the structural challenges of the academic system to best promote early career researchers.
Further, we offer workshops on a selection of recurrent topics for early career researchers such as impostor syndrome (Mental Health Collective), stress management (Innerminder) or how to coordinate your projects (Scholar Minds).
Another highlight of the conference will be several hackathons tackling current challenges of the academic world such as how to improve the situation for international early career researchers in Germany (MATH+), bridging mental health and academic (N2 Network) or how the perfect graduate school (Dragonfly Mental Health) could look like.
Last but not least, there will be a panel discussion on the topic “Towards sunnier days: How to overcome the mental health crisis in academia?” opening the stage for different players of the academic system such as Jule Specht (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin), Martin Grund (Max Planck Institute Leipzig), Ralf Kurvers (Science of Intelligence), and Aite Kashef (Lise-Meitner-Gesellschaft).
Please use this link to register: https://bit.ly/mh-event2021
If you have any questions, please contact scholar-minds@charite.de.
Homepage: http://www.scholar-minds.net/
E-Mail: scholar-minds@charite.de
Twitter: @BerlinMinds

Cameron Buckner (Univ. of Houston), Imagination and the Prospects for Empiricist Artificial Intelligence
2021-10-28 16:00 - 17:30 | On Zoom
Abstract: In current debates over deep-neural-network-based AI, deep learning researchers have adopted the mantle of philosophical empiricism and associationism, and its critics have taken up the side of philosophical rationalism and nativism. These rationalist critics, however, often interpret associationism and empiricism in a way which is too caricatured to fit the views of any significant thinker in the empiricist tradition. In particular, most empiricists were faculty theorists; while they generally eschewed innate knowledge, they appealed to a variety of domain-general innate faculties like memory, imagination, and attention to explain how the mind abstracts knowledge from experience. This dynamic is vividly illustrated in a centuries-displaced debate between David Hume and Jerry Fodor over the role of imagination in cognitive architecture. Fodor famously claimed that the ability to synthesize novel ideas and create new compositional representations is required for cognition. Fodor applauds Hume for agreeing on these points, but criticizes Hume’s use of the imagination to discharge these burdens. Fodor claims that such an appeal for an associationist is “cheating”, and notes that Hume never explains how the empiricist imagination actually works, merely assigning it a variety of essential functions to perform “as if by magic”.
More recently, deep learning researchers have claimed to create generative deep neural network models that perform one or more of the roles ascribed to the imagination by cognitive psychology and neuroscience. In this talk, I canvass these models and their achievements (especially Generative Adversarial Networks, Variational Autoencoders, and Generative Transformers) to arbitrate this dispute between Humean empiricism and Fodorian rationalism. Of particular interest will be various methods of latent space vector interpolation which appear to allow these models to create novel compositional representations, whether these methods still count as associationist in nature, and whether the purportedly crucial distinction between interpolation and extrapolation remains viable in the higher-order dimensional spaces over which these models operate.
Click here for Cameron Buckner’s Bio.
The Zoom Link will be sent the day before the lecture.

Berlin Science Week Talk, Guillermo Gallego: Giving Robots T-Rex-Inspired Eyes
2021-11-02 06:00 - 19:00 | On Zoom
Ever heard of neuromorphic cameras? They are bio-inspired sensors that mimic the transient visual pathway. These cameras do not acquire pictures or full images as a normal video camera. Instead, they sense only intensity changes at every pixel as they occur with microsecond resolution (called “events” or “spikes”). These cameras offer many advantages compared to traditional image-based cameras, such as high speed, a very high dynamic range, and low power consumption, and are slowly finding their way into computer vision and robotics applications. Come to learn more about these novel cameras!
Please register on the BSW website here
