World model learning and inference

Understanding information processing in the brain-and creating general-purpose artificial intelligence-are long-standing aspirations of scientists and engineers worldwide. The distinctive features of human intelligence are high-level cognition and control in various interactions with the world including the self, which are not defined in advance and are vary over time. The challenge of building human-like intelligent machines, as well as progress in brain science and behavioural analyses, robotics, and their associated theoretical formalisations, speaks to the importance of the world-model learning and inference. In this article, after briefly surveying the history and challenges of internal model learning and probabilistic learning, we introduce the free energy principle, which provides a useful framework within which to consider neuronal computation and probabilistic world models. Next, we showcase examples of human behaviour and cognition explained under that principle. We then describe symbol emergence in the context of probabilistic modelling, as a topic at the frontiers of cognitive robotics. Lastly, we review recent progress in creating human-like intelligence by using novel probabilistic programming languages. The striking consensus that emerges from these studies is that probabilistic descriptions of learning and inference are powerful and effective ways to create human-like artificial intelligent machines and to understand intelligence in the context of how humans interact with their world

Japan’s New Minority: Persons with Hattatsu Shogai (Developmental Disability).

This dissertation looks at the process by which a new category of disability, “hattatsu shōgai”, came to be defined in Japan. Hattatsu shōgai, literally translated as developmental disability, is considered to be a congenital disability caused by a functional disorder of the brain and includes learning disability, ADHD and autism spectrum disorder. The term gained a foothold in Japan over the past 10 years amidst the country’s economic and social stagnation, and the emergence of a group of young children with the diagnosis has caused much controversy and public debate over the meaning of the disability label and minority status. Based on an ethnographic study of several fields including schools, non-profit advocacy organizations and treatment programs, as well as interviews with parents, medical professionals, psychologists, disability rights activists and others involved with the community, this work is an attempt to take a close look at the local context by which the knowledge and practices concerning hattatsu shōgai has come to be shaped.PhDAnthropologyUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/108969/1/teruyama_1.pd