WHO:	Tom Mitchell , Carnegie Mellon University
TOPIC:	AI and the Impending Revolution in Brain Sciences
ABSTRACT:	The sciences that study the brain are currently undergoing a revolution, caused mainly by the invention of new instrumentation for observing and manipulating brain function. This new instrumentation ranges from fMRI brain imaging methods for observing brain activation in humans, to multineuron probes for direct recording of neural signals in animals, to genetic 'knock out' experiments for studying the impact of removing specific neurotransmitters. The thesis of this talk is that research over the coming decade in the brain sciences will have a significant impact on Artificial Intelligence research, and that AI will have an even more significant impact on studies of the brain. We'll examine two distinct ways in which this synergy between AI and brain sciences is already beginning to take shape. First, AI algorithms for specific tasks are providing a basis for interpreting new data on brain activity in animals - in several cases leading to the conclusion that animals may use approaches surprisingly similar to these engineered AI solutions. Second, machine learning methods are providing new ways to discover regularities in the huge volume of new data - for example, automatically discovering the spatial-temporal patterns of brain activity associated with reading a confusing sentence, or determining the semantic category of a word.
WHEN:	2/24/2003 11:00:00 AM
WHERE:	Computer Studies Building 209

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