Summit Proceedings Monte Verita, Ascona, Switzerland July 9-14, 2006 50th Anniversary Summit ...

266 Pages·2006·4.31 MB·English

50th Anniversary Summit
of Artificial Intelligence
Summit Proceedings
Monte Verita, Ascona, Switzerland
July 9-14, 2006

th
50 Anniversary Summit of Artificial Intelligence
Monte Verita, Ascona, Switzerland
July 9-14, 2006

Summit Proceedings

Conference Chair
Rolf Pfeifer, University of Zurich, Switzerland
Program Co-Chairs
Max Lungarella, University of Tokyo, Japan
Fumiya Iida, University of Zurich, Switzerland
Josh Bongard, Cornell University, USA
Program Committee
Rodney Brooks, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA
Yasuo Kuniyoshi, University of Tokyo, Japan
Linda Smith, Indiana University, USA
Olaf Sporns, Indiana University, USA
Luc Steels, Sony Computer Science Laboratory Paris, France

Acknowledgment
This event has only been possible thanks to the generous sponsorship
of a number of companies and institutions.
Main Sponsor
Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
Department of Informatics
University of Zurich
Advisor for PR and sponsor relations

The 50th Anniversary Summit of Artificial Intelligence
– Artificial Intelligence in the 21st century –

Rolf Pfeifer1, Max Lungarella2, Fumiya Iida1, Josh Bongard3
1Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, University of Zurich
2Laboratory for Intelligent Systems and Informatics, University of Tokyo
3Computational Synthesis Lab, Cornell University

The discipline of Artificial Intelligence (AI) was “born” in the summer of 1956 in Dartmouth in
Hanover, New Hampshire. Half a century has passed and AI – coming a long way since its
inception – has turned into an important field whose influence on our daily lives can hardly be
overestimated. Many specialized AI systems exist that are at work in our cars, in our laptop
computers, and in our personal and commercial technologies. Undoubtedly, in the future the
impact of AI on our lives is poised to increase, blurring even more the already fuzzy boundary
between man and machine.

Past, present, and future: The first important goal of this workshop is to celebrate AI’s 50th
anniversary by reflecting on its history and development, assessing the state of the art, and
speculating about the future of the field. Despite the significant advances of AI in the last 50
years – recall IBM’s Deep Blue computer beating the chess world champion Garry Kasparov in
a landmark victory in 1997 at a tournament in New York – it is clear that the original challenges
set by the first generation of AI visionaries have yet to be met. Not only is natural intelligence
far from being understood and artificial forms of intelligence still so primitive compared to
natural ones, but seemingly simple tasks like categorization, recognition, and manipulation of
objects – which are “easy” for a 3-year-old – remain to be realized artificially. A look at the
current research landscapes of psychology and neuroscience reveals the paucity of knowledge
about how biological brains achieve their remarkable functionalities, how these functionalities
develop in the child, and how they have arisen in the course of evolution. Also, we do not have
a good understanding of the cultural and social processes that have helped shape human
intelligence. Moreover, because basic theories of natural intelligence are lacking and – despite
impressive advances – the required technologies for building sophisticated artificial systems are
still not available, the capabilities of current robots fall far short of the intelligence of even very
simple animals. At the workshop we will discuss the potential reasons for this unsatisfactory
situation. One hypothesis that many researchers have been pursuing in recent years is that this
might be due to the strict adherence to the computational paradigm – “cognition as
computation” – and the neglect of embodiment and the interaction with the physical and social
world. Other hypotheses concern the lack of computational power and the insufficient
incorporation of formal methods. However that may be, an analysis of the discipline reveals that
in a large part of the research community a clear paradigm shift is under way – from a purely
computational view to one of embodiment. In this view, intelligent behavior is not merely the
result of computational processes, but emerges from the interaction of brain processes,
morphology, material properties, and interaction with the environment.

Interdisciplinarity and cross-fertilization: Embodiment implies that we need to consider all
aspects of an organism – brain, body, system-environment interaction – which in turn means
that researchers from many disciplines need to participate in the adventure of unraveling the
processes underlying intelligent behavior. The second main objective of the workshop is
therefore to bring together not only computer scientists, linguists, and psychologists, but also
biologists, neuroscientists, engineers, roboticists, material scientists, as well as researchers of
dynamical systems and biomechanics. It is our conviction that breakthroughs can only be
achieved through a strong cross-fertilization among these fields and by initiating and fostering
cooperation between groups from different disciplines.

Goals of AI research: There are three kinds of goals associated with modern AI research –
understanding biological systems, abstracting key principles of intelligent behavior, and
developing practical applications. The first goal, understanding animals and humans, can be
tackled using the synthetic methodology, which can be characterized by the slogan
“understanding by building.” Since its early days, this has been the standard approach of AI:
You are interested in some phenomenon, say, how humans recognize a face in a crowd or how
ants find their way back to the nest after a foraging trip, and you try to understand how this
comes about by building an artifact – a robot or a computer program – that mimics certain
aspects of this phenomenon. This method has proved extremely powerful. Of course, this step
requires the close interdisciplinary cooperation of biologists, neuroscientists, and engineers.
Next, principles need to be abstracted so that the insights can also be applied to artificial
systems – the question here is what has been learned. This can be viewed as the first traces of a
“theory of intelligence.” Finally, the insights can be applied to the design of useful applications.
In traditional applications, human intelligence has frequently supplied the motivation for the
research, but then the problem was often solved without trying to mimic the biological system,
as for example in most approaches to machine learning. In order to be successful an application
often does not need to slavishly copy from nature, as best illustrated by IBM’s Deep Blue
victory. However, if we are interested in adaptive systems in the real world – and a lot of recent
research in AI is going in this direction – nature can be a great source of inspiration. Again,
interdisciplinary cooperation will be a key to technological progress and scientific
breakthroughs.

Broad impact: With the highly varied background of the participants and the grand challenges
and issues AI addresses, we hope that the impact of the workshop and of the field in general will
go far beyond the scientific and engineering discipline of AI proper. There is no doubt that the
concepts and fascination developed in AI have already reached society at large, including
business, art, entertainment, and the media. This is the reason why we have researchers as well
as people from other walks of life who have provided valuable input to the development of the
field, such as businesspeople, artists, and journalists. We are convinced that the outcome will
not only help us sketch out the future directions of AI research, but also understand how deep
the paradigm change represented by embodiment in fact goes. The pertinent ideas will be
incorporated into a publication emerging from the workshop (proceedings, book, or handbook),
which will form a comprehensive collection of opinions and views.

Program: The various goals are reflected in the structure of the conference program. Because
the discussion of core issues is an essential components there will be, in addition to formal
lectures and poster sessions, a series of panel discussions on a number of topics. The first panel
entitled the “The future of AI – classical or embodied” raises the topic of a paradigm shift, of an
“embodied turn”, so to speak. The panel on “Advertising AI to the public and to companies –
strategies and methods” will discuss strategies of how to commercialize ideas from AI research.
The session on “The new landscape of artificial intelligence – the impact of other research
areas” focuses on the new landscape of AI and its relations to other disciplines normally not
directly associated with AI such as neuroscience, bionics, biomechanics, and material science,
but that do make significant contributions to the field. “Modern AI: beyond ‘cognition as
computation’?” asks the question of whether an extension of the notion of computation will be
required in order to understand embodied forms of intelligence. And finally, at the level of
policy and science management, the subject of funding is of course crucial to the development
of AI. The final panel, “Funding AI research”, will discuss pertinent policies and strategies of
different funding agencies for AI research.

The first day of the Summit is dedicated to the first objective, to reflecting on history and
prospects and to assessing the impact of the field on society at large. The second day will focus
on cross-fertilization, that is, on the relation between the various scientific and non-scientific
disciplines, e.g. engineering, psychology, neuroscience and neural interfacing, bionics,
biomechanics, and art. The third day, entitled “The insider view of AI” features prominent AI
researchers presenting their perspective on the state-of-the art. The fourth day is dedicated to the
presentation of important research projects, demonstrating the breadth of today’s field of AI
research. Finally, the goal of the fifth and last day is to come up with a synthesis of the ideas
generated during the meeting.

In order to reach not only scientists, but also the public, schools, and children, we plan an event
where we will explain the basic ideas of AI in non-technical language on the 12th of July. This
will include a demonstration of some of the most advanced robots in the world.

Acknowledgements: This event has only been possible thanks to the generous sponsorship of a
number of companies and institutions: Siemens (main sponsor), Centro Stefano Franscini,
Neuronics, Migros Kulturprozent, Swisscom, and the AI Lab (Department of Informatics,
University of Zurich). We would also like to thank matek for their competent advice on PR and
sponsor relations.

We hope you will enjoy the conference!