Colloquium Multi-Agent Systems: Jakub Szymanik (ILLC, Amsterdam) and Sujata Ghosh (ISI, Chennai)
| When: | Mo 11-06-2018 13:30 - 15:45 |
| Where: | Room 289, Bernoulliborg, Nijenborgh 9, Groningen |
TIME: 13:30-14:30 (Dr. Szymanik) and 14:45-15:45 (Dr. Ghosh)
Speaker 1: Jakub Szymanik (ILLC, Amsterdam)
Title: Learnability and Semantic Universals.
Abstract:
One of the great successes of the application of logic to natural language has been the ability to formulate robust semantic universals. When such a universal is attested, the question arises as to the source of the universal. In this paper, we explore the hypothesis that many semantic universals arise because expressions satisfying the universal are easier to learn than those that do not. While the idea that learnability explains universals is not new, explicit accounts of learning that can make good on this hypothesis are few and far between. We propose a model of learning — back-propagation through a recurrent neural network — which can make good on this promise. In particular, we discuss the universals in the domain of quantification and color categorization and perform computational experiments of training such a network to learn to verify quantifiers. Our results are able to explain some universals quite well.
Speaker 2: Sujata Ghosh (ISI, Chennai)
Title: Reasoning in Games
Abstract:
In addition to ‘real’ games like chess and bridge, the notion of games plays out in many different areas of life. As such, the study of reasoning and strategizing in games has become an integral part of many areas of science. After providing a brief overview of these relevant areas, the talk will focus on a particular kind of games, namely dynamic games, and discuss certain formal investigations of these games from the viewpoints of logic and game theory. The talk will not assume any previous knowledge of logic or game theory.