Speaker : Prof. Aapo Hyvarinen (Helsinki University)
Date and time : May 31st, 13:30-15:00
Venue : Online and Room 1FWS-A at ATR
* Room 1FWS-A; The workers in ATR are only available.
Title: Painful intelligence: What AI can tell us about human suffering
Abstract: This talk introduces my recent e-book with the same title, freely available at www.painfulintelligence.info . The book uses the modern theory of artificial intelligence (AI) to understand human suffering or mental pain. Both humans and sophisticated AI agents process information about the world in order to achieve goals and obtain rewards, which is why AI can be used as a model of the human brain and mind. The book starts with the assumption that suffering is mainly caused by frustration. Frustration means the failure of an agent (whether AI or human) to achieve a goal or a reward it wanted or expected. Frustration is inevitable because of the overwhelming complexity of the world, limited computational resources, and scarcity of good data. In particular, such limitations imply that an agent acting in the real world must cope with uncontrollability, unpredictability, and uncertainty, which all lead to frustration. Such computational theory is finally used to derive various interventions or training methods that will reduce suffering in humans. The ensuing interventions are very similar to those proposed by Buddhist and Stoic philosophy, and include mindfulness meditation.
Host : Okito Yamashita (RIKEN-AIP/ATR)
Acknowledgement : This seminar is supported by the AMED-BMB project.
Public events of RIKEN Center for Advanced Intelligence Project (AIP)
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