Category Archives: Events

Events, News

Artificially intelligent: from love to war to art

AISB50_logoThe possibility of falling in love (and having sex) with robots, and the future use of Artificial Intelligence to decide who lives and dies on the battlefield were just two of many topics discussed at Goldsmiths, University of London last week.

On 1–4 April, Goldsmiths hosted the Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and the Simulation of Behaviour (AISB) Convention 2014 (known as AISB50). This year’s convention commemorated the 50th anniversary of the AISB, and marked 60 years since the death of the founding father of computer science and AI, Alan Turing.

The convention investigated the constantly evolving relationship between humans and machines, including:

  • Love and sex with robots
  • The future of art and computing: a post-Turing centennial perspective
  • Should AI be used to make ‘kill decisions’ on the battlefield?
  • What could Robotics contribute to Language Sciences?

Speaking before the conference, Kate Devlin, Lecturer in Computing said: “Everyone here at Goldsmiths is excited and honoured to host AISB50, especially given that 2014 is such significant year for computer science. AI is a hugely important topic and one that can have an impact on every aspect of life – from love to war to art.”

Speakers included: Professor Susan Stepney (University of York), Professor Lucy Suchman (Lancaster University); Dr Hannah Smithson (University of Oxford); John Barnden (University of Birmingham); Professor Humberto Maturana (Instituto de Formación Matriztica, Chile); and Professor Terence Deacon (University of California, Berkeley). Goldsmiths’ own Professor Simon Colton also delivered one of the public lectures.

Events, Inspiration

Designs of the Year 2014

DOTY-CATALOGUE-634The Design Museum’s Designs of the Year exhibition showcases the world’s best cutting-edge digital, architecture, fashion, furniture, graphic, product and transport design.

Digital innovations include:

  • a crowd-sourced search-and-rescue drone
  • a transport app which make the world’s most complicated cities easier to navigate
  • a mobile gaming app designed to be deployed over many centuries, so impossible to finish in your lifetime
  • a platform for people to strike up conversations with street furniture
  • a calendar made entirely of Lego that synchronises to your online calendar.
  • Dumb Ways to Die, a song, book, smartphone game and interactive outdoor posters designed to get young people to care about safety
  • the Oculus Rift, a ground-breaking virtual reality headset for immersive gaming (currently being adapted by Goldsmiths student Terence Broad)
  • a smartphone-based system for affordable and portable eye examinations
  • a smartphone spectrometer that can analyse pollutants
  • Touch Board, which can turn almost any surface or material into an interface.

This is a not-to-be-missed exhibition for anyone interested in design!
26 March 2014 – 25 August 2014

!! Use the code DEZ25 to get 25% off online tickets !!

Designs of the Year 2014 website

Events

Talk: Intelligent narrative generation

mark-riedlYou are invited to Mark Riedl’s talk entitled Intelligent Narrative Generation: Creativity, Engagement, and Cognition.

Where: Room 322, New Academic Building (NAB)
When: 4pm Monday 31 March 2014

(And at 7pm, join Mark Bishop’s book launch event)

Abstract
Storytelling is a pervasive part of the human experience — we as humans tell stories to communicate, inform, entertain, and educate. Indeed there is evidence to suggest that narrative is a fundamental means by which we organize, understand, and explain the world. In this talk, I present research on artificial intelligence approaches to the creation of novel narrative structures using a range of cognitively inspired techniques from planning to machine learning. I discuss how computational story generation capabilities facilitate the creation of engaging, interactive user experiences in virtual worlds, computer games, and training simulations. I conclude with an ongoing research effort toward generalized computational narrative intelligence in which a system learns from crowdsourced experiences.

Biography
Dr. Mark Riedl is an Assistant Professor in the Georgia Tech School of Interactive Computing and director of the Entertainment Intelligence Lab. Dr. Riedl’s research focuses on the intersection of artificial intelligence, virtual worlds, and storytelling. The principle research question his lab addresses is: how can intelligent computational systems reason about and create engaging experiences for users of virtual worlds and computer games. Dr. Riedl explores this question in two ways. First, he seeks to understand how computational systems can represent, reason about, and create narratives and interactive stories. Second, he seeks to understand how computational systems can autonomously design computer games. Dr. Riedl earned a PhD degree in 2004 from North Carolina State University. From 2004 to 2007, Dr. Riedl was a Research Scientist at the University of Southern California Institute for Creative Technologies. Dr. Riedl joined the Georgia Tech College of Computing in 2007. His research is supported by the NSF, DARPA, ONR, the U.S. Army, U.S. Health and Human Services, Disney, and Google. He is the recipient of a DARPA Young Faculty Award and an NSF CAREER Award.

Events, Publications, Staff profiles and activity

Book launch: Contemporary Sensorimotor Theory

sensorimotorWhy does a circle look curved and not angular? And why does red not sound like a bell?

To answer these questions, Goldsmiths’ Professor of Cognitive Computing Mark Bishop has co-edited the new book Contemporary Sensorimotor Theory.

Over the course of 16 essays, the book takes examples from human-computer interaction, children’s play, virtual reality, robotics and linguistics to analyse the philosophical foundations of sensorimotor theory – and introduce a radically new approach in cognitive science.

Mark Bishop and his co-editor Andrew Martin will launch the book at Goldsmiths’ New Academic Building at 7pm Monday 31 March 2014. All are welcome – email m.bishop@gold.ac.uk to book a place.

Mark Bishop is Professor of Cognitive Computing at Goldsmiths.

Events

Artificial Intelligence conference @ Goldsmiths

AISB-LOGOOn 1 – 4 April 2014, Goldsmiths hosts the 50th anniversary convention for the Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and the Simulation of Behaviour (AISB).

Plenary speakers

  • Professor Susan Stepney (asking “When does a slime mould compute?”)
  • Professor Lucy Suchman (presenting a lecture entitled “Human(oid) Robot Reconfigurations”)
  • Professor Terrence Deacon (examining the foundational requirements for a “living machine”)
  • Professor Humberto Maturana (posing the “Ethical dilemma of the AnthropoRobotic”)

There will be three evening public lectures:

To compliment the standard registration packages, there will be some Day Registrations and Associate Day Passes available each day on the door. Conference website