[CogSci] Spotlight Seminar on AI - Anthony Cohn - January 30 2025

[Antonio Lieto]

[* Apologies in case of multiple posting *]

The Italian Association for Artificial Intelligence, in collaboration with
the AISB (Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and Simulation
of Behaviour, UK) is pleased to announce the next seminar of its Spotlight
Seminars on AI initiative:

January 30  – 5:00 P.M. (CET)

Title: Evaluating Commonsense Reasoning in Large Language Models

Speaker: Anthony Cohn, University of Leeds, UK

Link Streaming: https://www.youtube.com/@AixiaIt/streams

Abstract:  In this talk I will discuss the ability of LLMs to perform
commonsense reasoning, particularly with regard to spatial reasoning.
Across a wide range of LLMs, although they show abilities rather better
than chance, they still struggle with many questions and tasks, for example
when reasoning about directions, or topological relations. I will also
discuss issues arising from the fact that some of the most powerful
language models currently are proprietary systems, accessible only via
(typically restrictive) web or software programming interfaces. This is the
Language-Models-as-a-Service (LMaaS) paradigm. In contrast with scenarios
where full model access is available, as in the case of open-source models,
such closed-off language models present specific challenges for evaluating,
benchmarking, and testing them.


Bio: Anthony (Tony) Cohn is Professor of Automated Reasoning in the School
of Computer Science, University of Leeds. His current research interests
range from theoretical work on spatial calculi (receiving a KR test-of-time
classic paper award in 2020) and spatial ontologies, to cognitive vision,
modelling spatial information in the hippocampus, and Decision Support
Systems, particularly for the built environment, as well as robotics. He is
Foundation Models lead at the Alan Turing Institute where he is conducting
research on evaluating the capabilities of large language models, in
particular with respect to commonsense reasoning, and is also a
co-investigator on a project combining LLMs and probabilistic answer set
programming.  He is Editor-in-Chief of Spatial Cognition and Computation and
was previously Editor-in-chief of the AI journal. He has previously been
President of IJCAI, EurAI, KR inc, and AISB. He is the recipient of the
2021 Herbert A Simon Cognitive Systems Prize, and is also (uniquely)  the
recipient of  Distinguished Service Awards from the three main
international AI societies:  IJCAI, AAAI and EurAI, as well as from KR Inc.
He is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering,  the Learned Society of
Wales, the AI societies AAAI, AISB,  EurAI and AAIA, as well as the CORE
Academy (International Core Academy of Sciences and Humanities) and the
International AI Industry Alliance.

The joint AI*IA/AISB Committee of the Spotlight Seminars on AI,

Giuseppe De Giacomo

Floriana Grasso

Antonio Lieto

Bertie Muller

Luciano Serafini


-------------
Antonio Lieto, Ph.D
Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of Salerno, Italy
Head of Cognition Interaction and Intelligent Technologies Lab (CIIT)
Research Associate at ICAR-CNR, Palermo, Italy
Home: https://www.antoniolieto.net
ACM Distinguished Speaker: https://speakers.acm.org/speakers/lieto_12489

Associate Editor of Cognitive Systems Research (Elsevier)
https://www.journals.elsevier.com/cognitive-systems-research/editorial-board


Author of "Cognitive Design for Artificial Minds" (2021), Routledge, Taylor
& Francis.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1138207950
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