I am honored to have given a keynote talk at the AI Startups Conference in San Francisco on May 25th, 2016. My talk is titled “A Cognitive Architectural Map of AI Startup Ideas.”
Talk Abstract: When you are thinking of what new type of AI algorithm will bring a greater range of human assistance, it helps to have a map of which types of human cognition have already been proposed as theories, engineered, implemented, and tested. Many researchers and practitioners in the field of AI specialize in one or two or three primary areas of focus, while not thinking as much about the various other related fields of study that as a whole, comprise human understanding of human cognition. Seeing the distribution of research in the cognitive sciences as a whole gives us an interesting view of what problems currently require solutions. For example, medicine is a strong human need so we are not surprised to see cognitive sciences related to medical disorders highly represented. Medicine may be the path to immortality, so might as well invest now. I think of Artificial Intelligence as a field that develops computational understanding of perceiving, thinking, learning, acting and associated processes. Where can the next intelligence boost come from? This is the age old question for any start-up: what will be the next great technology boom and how do we get out ahead of it? Humans exhibit a wide range of intelligences that are ripe for computational modelling.