E-Paper
Lecture on ‘compositionality in brains and machines’ marks 21st foundation day of Centre of Behavioural and Cognitive Sciences
The centre has also organised a session on Saturday with two of its alumni, Ark Verma, assistant professor at the department of cognitive science, IIT-Kanpur and Abhilasha, usability engineer, Philips, Bengaluru.
Centre of Behavioural and Cognitive Sciences (CBCS) of Allahabad University (AU) celebrated its 21st foundation day on Friday.
On the occasion, the Centre organised a foundation day lecture on the topic “Compositionality in brains and machines” which was delivered by Prof Bapi Raju S of the International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT), Hyderabad.
The session began with a brief report on the accomplishments of the Centre during the past year by the head of the Centre, Prof Bhoomika R Kar followed by an invocation with a Bharatnatayam performance by Amruthavalli, a second-year masters’ student at the CBCS. This was followed by a deliberation about compositionality in cognition (vision, language and action) by Prof Bapi Raju who is faculty member at the Cognitive Science Lab in IIIT-Hyderabad.
His research interests include neural networks, cognitive modelling and pattern recognition. He has been associated with CBCS since its inception.
In his talk he reviewed the strengths and weaknesses of foundational models such as DALL-E-2 and GPT-3, highlighting their limitations in composable generalization. He explained that the combinatorial nature of compositionality poses enormous problems for machines but at the same time, it is intriguing how humans and some animals accomplish this effortlessly. The talk ended with suggestions as to how Cognitive Science can offer insights into deep learning methods.
Prof Janak Pandey, former vice-cancellor of Central University of South Bihar and the founder head, CBCS, congratulated the centre for its contributions in the field of cognitive science and encouraged the faculty and students, emphasising upon the multi-faceted growth of this discipline in India. The session ended with vote of thanks proposed by Niharika Singh, a faculty member of CBCS.
The centre has also organised a session on Saturday with two of its alumni, Ark Verma, assistant professor at the department of cognitive science, IIT-Kanpur and Abhilasha, usability engineer, Philips, Bengaluru.
While Verma will deliver a talk on ‘how the self may guide our social behaviour’, Abhilasha will discuss about cognitive science applications for the industry and she will interact with students and responding to their concerns about a career for a cognitive science graduate in the industry.
