Science on Screen®
COMPUTER CHESS
The Science of Computer Learning: “Why playing chess is easy: what we
misunderstood about intelligence”
Thursday, June 20th at 7 PM
Featuring a screening and conversation with Kyle Daruwalla & Ari Benjamin,
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
$16 Public | $10 Members
Join us for an entertaining and
illuminating evening focusing on the surprising similarities and differences in
how computers and the human brain learn,
featuring a conversation with scientists Kyle Daruwalla & Ari Benjamin from
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, and screening of Andrew Bujalski’s cult hit
movie.
Eleven years ago, the influential
independent filmmaker Andrew Bujalski, director of Funny Ha Ha, Mutual
Appreciation, and Support the Girls,
made the daring, prescient Computer Chess. Set in the 1980s at
the start of the tech revolution, over the course of a weekend tournament for
chess software programmers, Computer Chess transports viewers to a nostalgic
moment when the contest between technology and the human spirit seemed a little
more up for grabs. We get to know the eccentric geniuses possessed of the
vision to teach a metal box to defeat man, literally, at his own game, laying
the groundwork for artificial intelligence as we know it and will come to know
it in the future. Science fiction in reverse, Computer Chess, which was shot
entirely on a consumer-grade Sony videocamera, anticipated our present
artificial intelligence debate 11 years ago and is set 30 years before that.
With a funny, deeply weird, almost surreal tone, Bujalski’s film is a delight,
providing a refreshing lens on our relationship to technology and artificial
intelligence while offering a slice of analog nostalgia. (USA, 2013, 92 min.,
b/w, DCP).
Kyle
Daruwalla is a NeuroAI scholar at Cold Spring
Harbor Lab. Previously, he completed his B.S. in Computer Engineering and
Mathematics at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, then his M.S. and Ph.D. in
Electrical Engineering at University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research brings
together perspectives from computer science, machine learning, and
neuroscience. Specifically, Kyle studies how evolution and neural development
can guide us to produce artificial intelligence that learns with less data and
fewer energy resources. He also works with the Hou Lab at CSHL to study facial
expressions in rodents. Outside of the lab, he enjoys playing guitar,
woodworking, and hiking with his dog, George. Watching George learn is a
constant source of curiosity and inspiration for Kyle.
Ari
Benjamin studies the similarities – and
differences – between the design of artificial intelligence systems and the
brain. Despite their strikingly similar capabilities, such as abstract
association, prediction, and styles of pattern recognition, their underlying
architecture is not as similar as many AI proponents lead on. At CSHL, Ari is
postdoctoral researcher working in Tony Zador's lab to study the reasons why
the brain has so many cell types whereas AI systems have so few (arguably just
1). Other interests include the differences in learning algorithms, what either
system finds easy or hard to learn, and the ethical issues of AI systems in
society. Prior to CSHL, Ari received his PhD at the University of Pennsylvania
and BA in physics at Williams College.
An initiative of the COOLIDGE CORNER
THEATRE, with major support from the ALFRED P. SLOAN FOUNDATION.
Special
Thanks to Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory for making this event possible, with an
extra special thank you to Caroline Cosgrove and Brianne Seviroli at CSHL for
their hard work making this idea into reality.
