Colloquium Artificial Intelligence - Prof. Dr. H. Jaeger (University of Groningen)

Title: Controlling and Shaping Neural Dynamics with Conceptors

Abstract:

The human brain is a dynamical system whose extremely complex sensor-driven neural processes give rise to conceptual, logical cognition. Understanding the interplay between nonlinear neural dynamics and concept-level cognition remains a major scientific challenge.

Here I propose a mechanism of neurodynamical organization, called conceptors, which unites nonlinear dynamics with basic principles of conceptual abstraction and logic. It becomes possible to learn, store, abstract, focus, morph, generalize, de-noise and recognize a large number of dynamical patterns within a single neural system; novel patterns can be added without interfering with previously acquired ones; neural noise is automatically filtered. Conceptors may help to model how conceptual-level information processing emerges naturally and robustly in neural systems.