Dr. Nakayama Presents at the Fourth Workshop for the 2019 Kyoto Kokoro Initiative

The fourth Kyoto Kokoro Initiative Workshop was held at the Inamori Center on June 12th, 2019. The theme for this year’s Kyoto Kokoro Initiative, which will take place on the 14th of October, is “Kokoro and the Artificial Mind” (tentative title). Dr. Masataka Nakayama (Assistant Professor, Kokoro Research Center) presented a paper entitled, “Future Views of Kokoro in the Age of Artificial Intelligence: Human as Machine and Machine as Human”.

Dr. Nakayama first introduced the concept of “connectionism”, which conceptualizes humans as machines and underlies the current efforts to develop artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. Simulations conducted by him and his collaborator show that neural networks designed to implement biological characteristics of the hippocampal system can learn to implement complex functions that simulate data from behavioral and neuroimaging studies. Dr. Nakayama then proposed that while the conception of humans as machines is essential for specialists in human and machine intelligence, the conception of machine as human is also important for the public to understand and interact with AI. He presented some recent research supporting the possibility of human-like AI that would seem to have a mind, i.e., kokoro.

During the discussion that followed, the speaker and the audience debated the definition of AI, questioning the possibility of its revision, and the distinction between AI and human knowledge. They also discussed the need for human-likeness in developing AI.

2019/08/28