Hizlari gonbidatua: Olivia Guest. How we reason over artificial neural networks

What: How we reason over artificial neural networks

Where: Online talk; BCBL Auditorium Zoom room (If you would like to attend to this meeting reserve at info@bcbl.eu)

Who: Olivia Guest. PhD, Assistant Professor, Cognitive Science and AI Department, Donders Centre for Cognition & School of Artificial Intelligence, Radboud University, The Netherlands

When:  Thursday, Feb 26th at 12:00 PM noon.

I will demonstrate a way of understanding our reasoning as cognitive, neuro, and psychological scienists. This is done through creating a formal account of our adjudication over theories, a metatheoretical calculus. The example I will walk through is of connectionism, a highly influential cognitive scientific framework, that deeply implicates artificial neural networks. I will analyze these models: when used as scientific instruments of study and when functioning as emergent arbiters of the zeitgeist in the cognitive, computational, and neural sciences. Through these lenses, we can charactise two distinct tendencies within connectionism — classical and modern — with divergent properties (e.g. goals, mechanisms, and scientific questions). Ultimately, by engaging more deeply with the metatheoretical calculi we deploy when we think about artificial neural networks, our fields can obviate and reflect on the cycle of artificial intelligence winters and summers.