Hurray! I received a congratulatory email that I have been selected to participate in the 2020 Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI). DISI is an initiative that brings together scholars and scientists from diverse disciplines including animal cognition, anthropology, artificial intelligence (AI), cognitive science, computer science, philosophy, psychology, and sociology to pursue collaborative research on the nature and future of intelligence. It’s been my interest to get to the heart of AI through a deeper understanding of intelligence. Since AI tends to mimic human intelligence, it is worth knowing how intelligence applies to humans and animals. I feel this understanding will help in designing intelligent machines that can reason within our cognitive radar.
In my application, I was asked several questions for which I am going to share a summarized version of my answers below.
Statement of purpose
Please explain why you would like to attend the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI). How does it fit into your current research or future plans? What impact do you hope it will have on your career?
Here, I related how DISI would be my first deep dive into the problem of intelligence having attended several summer schools in the area of AI, Bayesian statistics, machine learning and computer vision. I wanted to see how DISI could help me in answering one of my research questions which is “how machines can extract the most meaningful representations in data”. I went on to mention the benefits of engaging with experts and researchers from multidisciplinary fields.
Proposed project
A big part of DISI is the opportunity to engage in new collaborative projects with other participants. Imagine that you are pitching an idea to fellow participants to entice them to join you in a collaborative project. What would that idea be?
A project that investigates machine intelligence in the context of human intelligence. Still relates to how machines can learn the most useful context of data just like humans.
Inspirational reading
What is the most exciting piece of scholarly writing you’ve read in the past year? And what is the most stimulating piece of non-scholarly writing you’ve read in the same timeframe? Why did they ignite your intellectual fires?
Prof Neil Lawrence’s Living Together: Mind and Machine Intelligence. The worry about AI shouldn’t be whether they will replace us but that because they work below our cognitive radar, they could make decisions without understanding our human conditions.
The second one is Emotional Intelligence (EI) by Daniel Goleman. It got me curious about the relationship between AI and E. Does AI need emotions? How can we create AI with EI?
Exploring intelligences
Please describe an under-explored aspect or manifestation of intelligence, mind, or cognition that you believe merits further investigation.
How to regulate the operations of machines so they don’t trespass human freedom knowing that their predictions are made in an entirely different way from the way humans make decisions.
Contribution to diverse community
We support and value diversity in all its forms. Explain how your personal background contributes to your having a unique perspective that will be an asset to building a diverse community of scholars.
I shared a story of how my teaching of Basic Technology in a local community made me adapt my communication and delivery to match the varying cognitive capacities of my students.
I feel one thing that helped me in my application was the research I first conducted about previous DISI. I read about the interests and works of previous winners and DISI fellows. If you are interested in summer schools on intelligence, you can keep an eye on DISI 2021 or MIT’s Brains, Minds and Machines (BMM). For other interests, you may be surprised at what you’ll find with a google search. Good luck!
Indeed you are a gem. Congratulations and thank you for sharing.
This is great. Research is what we need to do more importantly how best to go about it. Keep it up.
Thank you Onyekachi for reading and leaving a nice comment. Glad you gleaned something from the read.
Great brains! Congratulations and thanks for sharing.
Thank you Blessing for hailing. I appreciate!