Free talk about talking to robots

Robots may soon be delivering pizza and parcels, driving cars and helping the kids with their homework. How will they communicate with us?

That’s the theme of a talk being given by Professor Janet Wiles at the Powerhouse on Tuesday 9 February 2016 from 7:00pm to 8:30pm. Professor Wiles research program involves bio-inspired computation in complex systems, with applications in cognitive science and biorobotics. She currently coordinates the University of Queensland node of the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language, where her research focuses on robots and language.

Robots can download a dictionary and start talking, but a dictionary doesn’t understand its own words and nor would the robots. Language is not that simple.

So, could a robot ever say-what-it-means and mean-what-it-says? This talk is about exactly that: robots, called Lingodroids, that really do understand the language they use. We know these robots understand because they invent their own words to describe their own experiences.

Prof Wiles’ talk will describe how such robots roam the world, asking each other questions like “Where are we” and “What time is it?” Through these conversations, they invent words for places and times, linking the meanings to their own experiences. Linking a place in the world to its name is called “grounding” and it is the first step in having robots truly understand what they say. The talk will describe how the Lingodroids invent robot languages, and then finish with a glimpse into how conversations with people can help robots learn the meanings of words in human languages.

The talk is free and you can register here.