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Technical Keynote Lecture

Prof. Murray Shanahan (Imperial College, London)

Neurodynamics and Creativity

Abstract

What are the barriers to achieving artificial general intelligence? I shall argue that one of the major obstacles is to build creativity into a machine. The kind of creativity in question here is not that of a great artist or composer, but something possessed by every child and by some non-human animals. In this talk, I shall spell out the important role of creativity in general intelligence, and put forward a theory of how it is realised in the biological brain, drawing on various computer models of neural dynamics.

Murray Shanahan is Professor of Cognitive Robotics at Imperial College London. In the 1980s, he studied computer science as an undergraduate at Imperial College, and then obtained his PhD from Cambridge University (King's College). Since then he has carried out work in artificial intelligence, robotics, and cogitive science, and has numerous peer-reviewed publications in these areas. For the past decade or so he has turned his attention to the brain, and the relationship between cognition and consciousness. His book "Embodiment and the Inner Life" was published by Oxford University Press in 2010.