COGS 311 - Seminar in Cognitive Science

Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)

Topic for 2018/19b: Human-Machine Collaboration. STS 311) The tasks undertaken by artificially intelligent agents (AIA) and physical robots often require direct inputs from humans as designers, programmers, conductors, and consumers. As AIAs and robots gain behavioral intelligence and autonomy, the type of interaction has expanded beyond engineering to require, in some cases, run-time social and emotional exchange. With the advent of robots built to co-occupy human spaces, as separate or attached agents, the nature of interaction broadens to include physical contact, requiring that humans and robots co-operate and, ultimately, collaborate on creating and adjusting goals and action plans. These social and physical interactions are fertile ground for testing our theories of intelligence, autonomy, and cognition. What theoretical frameworks, if any, apply to human-machine collaboration? What is collaboration in the sense of dynamical systems, and how might AIAs, robots, and humans be represented in these models? How do humans experience, learn, and adjust their behavior in response to real-time interactions with machines? How might machines do the same with humans? John Long.

Prerequisite(s): One 200-level Cognitive Science course and permission of the instructor.

Two 2-hour periods.