Embodied Intelligence Workshop 2023
The Orthogonal Research and Education Lab participated in the Embodied Intelligence Workshop with three breakout room presentations. Congratulations to Jesse Parent, Amanda Nelson, and Bradly Alicea for their contributions.
Overall, the workshop provided an interdisciplinary view of the field. There was a significant focus on soft robotics, including bioelectronics, biomedical applications, and cellular systems. There was appearance by the Xenobots (frog embryo inspired agents). There was also a focus on embodiment in the mind and brain: Anil Seth discussed Computational Neurophenomenology (inspired by work on consciousness and predictive processing) as a way forward. There were also timely discussions such as “Is ChatGPT Embodied?”, which considers whether Large Language Models can be considered to be embodied (in the absence of a sensorimotor mechanism).
Developing a Survey of Methods and Philosophy for Embodied Cognition YouTube
This presentation by Jesse walks us through several related initiatives in the lab related to embodied cognition, including the posing of research questions and progress in intellectual development. This survey is updated from 2021 and 2022 and is a perpetual churn of identifying major debates and trends in a number of allied fields.
Embodied Neurophenomenology
Amanda presents an introduction to Embodied Neurophenomenology, as she intends to define the OREL approach to this topic. Building on the work of our Cognition Futures Reading Group (CFRG), she cites the approaches of Varela and Fuchs, particularly in terms of how they approach the first person versus third person approaches to inquiry.
Critical Periods as Developmental Neurosimulation
Bradly Alicea presents on his work simulating critical periods for the development of computational agents. This contributes to ongoing work on an area called developmental neurosimulation, which is part of our lab’s perspective on Developmental AI. The idea is to isolate the developmental process into two types of critical period: morphogenetic and behavioral. These critical periods are both essential to maintaining successful developmental plasticity, in addition to setting up developmental contingencies that shape interactions with the environment. You can read more about this work in a preprint now on the PsyarXiv.
