Speaker:

Alison Gopnik, Distinguished Professor of Psychology, UC Berkeley

Talk Title: Imitation & Innovation in AI: What Four-year-olds Can Do & AI Can't (Yet)

About Talk:

Young children's learning may be an important model for artificial intelligence (AI). Comparing children & artificial agents in the same tasks & environments can help us understand the abilities of existing systems & create new ones. In particular, many current large data-supervised systems, such as large language models (LLMs), provide new ways to access information collected by past agents. However, they lack the kinds of exploration & innovation that are characteristic of children. New techniques may help to instantiate child-like curiosity, exploration & play in AI systems.

About Speaker:

Alison Gopnik is a professor of psychology, affiliate professor of philosophy & member of the Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research (BAIR) Group at the University of California, Berkeley. She is an internationally recognized leader in the cognitive science of learning & development & the author of the bestselling & critically acclaimed books The Scientist in the Crib, The Philosophical Baby & The Gardener & the Carpenter. She is a Guggenheim, American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) & Cognitive Science Society fellow, a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, & president of the Association for Psychological Science. She writes the Mind & Matter science column for The Wall Street Journal & has appeared on The Charlie Rose Show, The Colbert Report, The Ezra Klein Show & Radio Lab.

About the Series:

The CITRIS Research Exchange & Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research Lab (BAIR) present a distinguished speaker series exploring the recent breakthroughs of AI, its broader societal implications & its future potential. Each seminar takes place on Wednesdays from noon to 1:00 p.m. in the Banatao Auditorium at Sutardja Dai Hall on the UC Berkeley campus & will be livestreamed on YouTube. All talks are free & open to the public.