11:30 am–12:30 pm
Jones 303
5747 S. Ellis Avenue
We are pleased to have Prof. John Lafferty, the John C. Malone Professor of Statistics & Data Science at Yale University, as our honored speaker, for the twenty-fourth annual Bahadur Memorial Lectures.
Title: Abstraction in Artificial and Natural Intelligence: Part I: Relational and Sequential Reasoning
Abstract: Two broad types of natural intelligence are used by humans (and other animals). One type is used to acquire semantic and procedural knowledge about the world. Another type is used to identify novel associations and relations. This second type of intelligence often requires very little data, but significant time to "think" and search for solutions; recent AI models mimic this type of intelligence using "chain of thought." We present a framework for modeling relational learning and abstraction, using an inductive bias called the relational bottleneck. To assess the flexibility of the relational bottleneck, a universal approximation theory is developed. To analyze the advantages of sequential reasoning, an extension of statistical learning theory for autoregressive models is proposed. This offers insight into how chain of thought sequential supervision can improve learning efficiency.