AI Colloquium with Prof. Edward A. Lee

On February 20th, the AI Colloquium welcomes Prof. Edward A. Lee as its speaker for a special edition with a keynote entitled “Will Embodied AI Become Sentient?”. After the talk, an interdisciplinary panel discussion will take place featuring Prof. Nicole Krämer from RC Trust, Prof. Jens Gerken and Prof. Sergio Lucia from the TU Dortmund University, Lamarr PI Eva Schmidt (TU Dortmund), and Prof. Jakob Rehof, one of Lamarr’s directors. It will be accompanied by with snacks and drinks in the foyer of our computer science building. The discussion, in which Lee will also participate, will stimulate an in-depth discussion of his previous lecture and other works of his.

The AI Colloquium, organized by the Lamarr Institute, the Research Center Trustworthy Data Science and Security (RC Trust) and the Center for Data Science & Simulation at TU Dortmund University (DoDas), provides a platform for leading researchers to present groundbreaking work in the field of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence. These 90-minute sessions unlike other colloquia, focus on interactive dialog and international collaboration and include one-hour lectures and 30-minute Q&A sessions. The colloquium will be held mainly in English.

Abstract

Today’s large language models have relatively limited interaction with the physical world. They interact with humans through the Internet, but even this interaction is limited for safety reasons. According to psychological theories of embodied cognition, they therefore lack essential capabilities that lead to a cognitive mind. But this is changing.  The nascent field of embodied robotics looks at properties that emerge when deep neural networks can sense and act in their physical environment. In this talk, I will examine fundamental changes that occur with the introduction of feedback through the physical world, when robots can not only sense to act, but also act to sense.  Processes that require subjective involvement, not just objective observation, become possible.  Using theories developed by Turing Award winner Judea Pearl, I will show that subjective involvement enables reasoning about causation, and therefore elevates robots to the point that it may become reasonable to hold them accountable for their actions.  Using theories developed by Turing Award winners Shafi Goldwasser and Silvio Micali, I will show that knowledge can be purely subjective, not externally observable.  Using theories developed by Turing Award winner Robin Milner, I will show that first-person interaction can gain knowledge that no objective observation can gain. Putting all these together, I conclude that embodied robots may in fact become sentient, but also that we can never know for sure whether this has happened.

Prof. Edward A. Lee

Edward A. Lee has over four decades of experience in embedded software systems. Following his academic and professional journey at Yale, MIT, and Bell Labs, he joined Berkeley, where he is now a Professor of the Graduate School in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences (EECS). Lee co-founded Xronos Inc. and BDTI, Inc. and initiated the open-source projects Lingua Franca and Ptolemy. He has also co-authored textbooks covering embedded systems, signals and systems, digital communications, and the broader societal impacts of technology. His current research centers on the Lingua Franca coordination language for distributed cyber-physical systems.