COGNITION by Horst Forster Interfaces, Knowledge and Content Technologies; Applications, Information Market DG Information Society Brussels, 29.01.2003.

COGNITIONCOGNITION

byby

Horst ForsterHorst Forster

Interfaces, Knowledge and Content Technologies; Interfaces, Knowledge and Content Technologies; Applications, Information MarketApplications, Information Market

DG Information SocietyDG Information Society

Brussels, 29.01.2003Brussels, 29.01.2003

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Subject area:

Digital content

Remit:

Make information accessible to all

Overcome multilingual barriers

Three pillars:

Market Applications

Research

Our missionOur mission

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Scope and instrumentsScope and instruments

Research and Technology DevelopmentResearch and Technology Development

Interfaces and CognitionInterfaces and Cognition

Knowledge management and Content creationKnowledge management and Content creation

ApplicationsApplicationsTechnology Enhanced Technology Enhanced

LearningLearningCultural HeritageCultural Heritage

Information Information MarketMarket

Public Sector Info.Public Sector Info.e-Contente-Content

e-Safee-Safe

Legis

lative

Legis

lative

mea

sure

s

mea

sure

sFinancial

Financial

intervention

interven

tion

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Cognition in SystemsCognition in Systems

Information technologies today

data, information, content - can be processed and transformed, transmitted and distributed, stored and displayed,…

Next step

data, information, content - can be interpreted

(understanding and context)

How? Combine with knowledge!

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Cognition in systems – why?Cognition in systems – why?

speech recognition natural ‘hands-free’ interfaces (eg: for mobile and wearable devices)

understanding semantics of information interactive Web services (eg: for tourism)

recognition and tracking in broadcast video creation of sports event statistics in real-time (eg: for advertisers, for audience)

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technological timescapetechnological timescape

1980s: cheap, small processors ubiquitous computing

1990s: cheap, small lasers ubiquitous communications

2000s: cheap, small sensors ubiquitous perception ??

sensors link world of interconnected computation

with real physical world

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perception and computationperception and computation

systems that:

‘see’, ‘hear’, ‘smell’ …

combined with computation to:

‘recognise’, ‘categorise’,‘understand’, ‘decide’, ‘act’ …

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what more do we need??what more do we need??

Interpretation requires more than ‘data’ computation

knowledge of context / situations

knowledge of tasks / goal

Knowledge-based systems

So where are these systems?

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the elusive real-world…the elusive real-world…

Process lines in factories: visual recognition capabilities empower robots to do intricate tasks … yet they can’t help out in the home

The Voice Web: telephone speech recognition can allow automation of customer services … but in very specific application domains

The issue at hand:

constrained conditions and artificial environments

versus

the endlessly variable ‘real world’

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more and more knowledge…more and more knowledge…

‘Real world’ environments and applications:different contexts and situations requires

knowledge to be adapted broader concerns require more and different kinds

of knowledge

systems fail in situations not envisaged in their design (lack of robustness)

systems function within narrow application domain (limited versatility)

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Systems that ‘know’ what they Systems that ‘know’ what they are doingare doing

Build bigger knowledge-bases?

No! – search becomes computationally intractable!

Cognitive systems?

systems that can extend their knowledge by reasoning and by learning from what they perceive

and use this knowledge for the purpose of achieving their performance goals

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Cognition - Why now? Cognition - Why now?

progress in artificial intelligence

progress in cognitive neuroscience

cheap and plentiful computing power

commoditisation of miniaturised sensors

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a window to the world…a window to the world…

Machines that ‘see’ the user: i. interprets gestures / behaviour adaptive,

natural interfaces

Machines that ‘see’ the environment: ii. performs visual tasks that are difficult, tedious or

impossible for humansiii. moves and navigates itself to perform various

tasks for humans (autonomous mobile robots)i and ii ONLY

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Research agendaResearch agenda

1. multimodal interfacesresearch: recognise speech and gestures; learning and adapting to behaviourtarget: facilitating natural interaction between humans and machines applications:user-friendly PCs(!!),wearable interfaces, smart clothes, intelligent rooms, collaborative work environments

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Research agendaResearch agenda

2. Semantic–based knowledge systemsresearch: annotation of content with ‘formalised’ knowledge; development of machine-processable vocabularies (ontologies) target: automated systems for knowledge handling applications:

knowledge discovery in databases, dynamic information services, automated diagnosis and decision support systems, Semantic Web (in time!)

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Research agendaResearch agenda

3. Cognitive systems research: integrate perception, action, representation, reasoning and learning in systems target: systems that do more than ‘canned’ predefined tasks; systems that handle new task specifications on the fly applications:image interpretation (eg: in medical or aerospace domains), behavioural interpretation (eg: in crowd surveillance or traffic monitoring), specialised interfaces (eg: sign language interpretation)

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progressprogress??

eg: machine vision systems:

10 y ago: maintain a description of the identity of objects or actors in a scene,

5y ago: … identity and the location …,

recently: … identity, location and the role …,

towards systems that are aware

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… … ultimately ultimately ……

The introduction of cognitive capabilities into systems will provide a quantum leap in functionality and flexibility:

systems that ‘know’ what they are doing

This is an evolutionary process!

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implicationsimplications

versatility: cost robustness: reliabilty , availibility

extend: scope functionality

efficiency

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On a final note….On a final note….

Progress in IT is not driven by speed and capacity alone.

As computing and communications become ubiquitous,

cognition will emerge as a key enabling technology

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