Colloquium

Professor  David Moore,  Pitzer College Professor of Developmental Psychology and Director of Claremont Infant Study Center from The Claremont Colleges.

Title: Possible roles for Developmental Science in the creation of Artificial General Intelligence 

Abstract: In 2019, DARPA funded the Machine Common Sense (MCS) program to improve the “common sense” of artificial intelligence (AI), hoping to advance the goal of producing artificial general intelligence (AGI). One strategy implemented in the program involved taking insights from empirical studies of infant development and applying them to AI research. By assembling collaborative teams of developmental psychologists and computer scientists, the program aimed to stimulate the design of AI systems with conceptual competences similar to those that characterize infants and toddlers. One of the teams was tasked with evaluating these systems’ performances. Leveraging tools devised by psychologists who have studied infant cognitive development since the 1960s, the evaluation team built a battery of controlled experiments to evaluate AI systems using tests of common sense about objects, places, and agents. In this talk, I will focus on the nature of the tests that were created as well as the strengths and weaknesses of current AI that were highlighted by the MCS program. In addition, I will discuss the unique challenges facing those working to produce AGI. Many of these challenges are apparent to those familiar with the complex processes underlying human cognitive development.