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The ShanghAI Lectures 2010
 

Lectures 2010

The ShanghAI Lectures 2010 are partially based on the recordings from 2009 (linked in the table below). All lectures and discussion sessions take place on Thursdays, 09:00--11:00 CET (see here for an overview of dates and time zones).

 

Date
Title Comments
2010-09-30

Lecture 1:

Welcome, site presentations, overview.
Intelligence: An eternal mystery

Short presentation
from every site
2010-10-07

Lecture 2:

Intelligence: AI and its Landscape.
Embodiment

send questions and

comments to Rolf

-> discuss next week

2010-10-14 Discussion session, exercises
in UNIworld
2010-10-21

Lecture 3:

Prerequisites for a Theory of Intelligence.

send questions and

comments to Rolf

-> discuss next week

2010-10-28 Discussion session, exercises in UNIworld
2010-11-04

Lecture 4:

Intelligence:
Properties, Principles and Development.

Design principles

send questions and

comments to Rolf

-> discuss next week

2010-11-11 Discussion session, exercises in UNIworld
2010-11-18

Lecture 5:

Evolution: Cognition from Scratch.
- Guest lecture by Simon Grand:
Intelligent Companies

- Guest lecture by Verena Hafner

send questions and

comments to Rolf

-> discuss next week

2010-11-25 Discussion session, exercises in UNIworld
2010-12-02

Lecture 6:

Collective and Modular Robotics.

send questions and

comments to Rolf

-> discuss next week

2010-12-09 Discussion session, exercises in UNIworld
2010-12-16

Lecture 7:

Intelligence in Ubiquitous Systems and
Interfacing Technology.

 

 

 

The full recordings of the ShanghAI Lectures 2009 are available here.

 

Book (mandatory)

htb_english How the Body Shapes the Way We Think – A New View of Intelligence

by Rolf Pfeifer and Josh C. Bongard, MIT Press, November 2006, ISBN 0-262-16239

 

Also available in Chinese:

htb_chinese 身体的智能-- 智能科学新视角

 

Also available in Japanese:

htb_japanese 知能の原理 ―身体性に基づく構成論的アプローチ―

 

Arabic and French translations will follow soon.

 

Lecture content

While in the classical approach “intelligence” was viewed essentially as information processing taking place in the brain, more recently the insight that the interaction with the environment is of central importance is gaining increasing acceptance. This has led to the metaphor of embodiment, i.e., that intelligence is always a property of an entire organism. This idea has farreaching implications and often leads to surprising insights.


This lecture series, consisting of nine sessions of roughly two hours (including a short break) and a tenth session of about 3 hours, provides a systematic introduction to the concept of embodiment (“Embodied Intelligence”). The implications of an embodied view on intelligence are not only of a scientific nature but lead to a completely different way of how we view ourselves and the world around us. Examples and illustrations will be taken from humans, animals, and engineering (robotics in particular) and are intended to demonstrate that things can always be seen differently from what we would normally expect.


Using the method of “understanding by building”, the lectures provide a set of design principles that on the one hand enable a better understanding of biological systems,and on the other provide heuristics for how to design artificial ones, in particular robots. The argument is based largely on the notions of time scales, complex dynamical systems, self-organization, and emergence.

 

The theoretical ideas will be illustrated with many examples and case studies from academia and the private sector, and there will be hands-on exercises with computer simulations and real robots (depending on the respective university's participation mode) and in the 3-dimensional collaborative virtual environment UNIworld.

 

announcements

ShanghAI Lectures 2010

Planning for the ShanghAI Lectures 2010 has started.

There will be another round of videoconference lectures, complemented with discussions and exercises in the collaborative virtual environment. Intended start: 30 September 2010.

For updates regarding the project, subscribe to the mailing list (don't worry: very low traffic).

 
Lecture 10 online
The SWITCHcast recordings of Lecture 10 (introduction, panel discussion) are available now, as well as the guest talks by Wenwei Yu, Hiroshi Yokoi, Adrianne Wortzel, and Xiaoan Li.
 
Lecture 9 online
The SWITCHcast recording of Lecture 9 is available now, as well as the guest talks by Alois Knoll/Mary Ellen Foster/Manuel Giuliani and Sukhan Lee.
 
Lecture 8 online
The SWITCHcast recording of Lecture 8 is available now, as well as the guest talks by Samia Nefti-Meziani and Christopher Lueg.

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