The Mahfouz Forum Public Lecture:
“When Will Your Robot Do What My Bird Does?”
Prof. Alex Kacelnik FRS
Thurs, 19 September 2013, 6pm
The Pichette Auditorium, Pembroke College

Abstract

Many animals display creative problem-solving abilities beyond those of the most advanced current autonomous robots. Should we be able to understand and emulate how they do it, engineers’ ability to build autonomous robots would enter a new and revolutionary phase. Reciprocally, should engineers tell biologists how they build robots capable of performing novel and complex tasks, we might be able to better understand how they (the organisms) do it. Close interaction between comparative cognition and artificial intelligence is thus a supremely timely multidisciplinary task. As a biologist and comparative cognitivist, I will present examples of problem solving performance by birds that challenge our current capability for artificial emulation.

Alex Kacelnik is Professor of Behavioural Ecology at Oxford University and EP Abraham Research Fellow in Zoology at Pembroke College Oxford. He studied biological sciences in Argentina and obtained a D. Phil in Oxford in 1979. After interludes in The Netherlands and Cambridge, Alex returned to Oxford in 1990, where he joined Pembroke College and created the Behavioural Ecology Research Group in the Department of Zoology. His current research deals with comparative cognition, decision-making and brood parasitism. In recent years he has been awarded the Cogito Prize in Switzerland, the de Robertis Medal in Argentina, and the Research Award of the Comparative Cognition Society in USA. He has published numerous research papers in over 30 animal species and is a fellow of the Royal Society.