Meta-Morphogenesis: Evolution of mechanisms for producing minds * Please note this talk is on a TUESDAY at 5:30PM, unlike most other talks we have held. *

Alan Turing's work on morphogenesis (see below) explored how micro-interactions in physicochemical structures might account for global transformations from a fertilized egg to an animal or plant, within a single organism.

I'll outline a rudimentary theory of "meta-morphogenesis" that aims to show how, over generations, interactions between changing environments, changing animal morphology, and previously evolved information-processing capabilities might combine to produce increasingly complex forms of "informed control", initially just control of physical behaviour, then later also informed control of information-processing. This potentially explains philosophically puzzling features of animal (including human) minds, including the existence of "qualia". It is also related to the transformation of empirical knowledge into a "generative" or "deductive" form, a process labelled "Representational Redescription" by Annette Karmiloff-Smith[*]. I suspect that such processes provide the foundation for human mathematical competences.

The Theory behind TheoryMineWe describe the technology behind the TheoryMine novelty gift company, which sells the rights to name novel mathematical theorems. A tower of four computer systems is used to generate recursive theories, to speculate conjectures in those theories and then to prove these conjectures. All stages of the process are entirely automatic. The process guarantees large numbers of sound, novel theorems of some intrinsic merit.

Alan BundyA concept we refer to as the biological constraint is shown to be able where id=11; to explain the effectiveness of mathematical descriptions of the universe, as well as accounting for the origin of life and our ability to think logically. The biological constraint, which can be studied systematically through the use of appropriate models, refers to selection in the biological realm in favour of mechanisms that have wide applicability, a subset of which have mathematical character that can evolve to ever subtler forms. The precise conformance of physical phenomena to precise mathematical laws is related to the enforcement of symmetry.

Intelligence and Security in a Digital AgeIn the talk I will look at the way that successive technological advances have shaped the past world of secret intelligence and suggest that the process continues with the application of digital technologies to intelligence access and analysis. I shall examine some of the ethical issues that recent developments have created and suggest a model for examining the limits that society should impose on their use for public security.

David OmandA concept we refer to as the biological constraint is shown to be able where id=11; to explain the effectiveness of mathematical descriptions of the universe, as well as accounting for the origin of life and our ability to think logically. The biological constraint, which can be studied systematically through the use of appropriate models, refers to selection in the biological realm in favour of mechanisms that have wide applicability, a subset of which have mathematical character that can evolve to ever subtler forms. The precise conformance of physical phenomena to precise mathematical laws is related to the enforcement of symmetry.

Using Machine Learning to Solve Real-World ProblemsHow do you approach a classification problem involving thousands of categories rather than the 'usual’ five or six? What happens when your data-set is several gigabytes and growing? What open-source tools are available, are they any good, and can they be put to commercial use? How do you measure the system’s effectiveness when you’re not allowed to see the real data because of client confidentiality?

David North, from Oxford-based software company CoreFiling, will aim to answer all these questions and more in a talk on machine learning from an industry perspective.

(Failing to) avoid success at all costs: the Haskell storyHaskell is twenty one years old, an age at which most programming languages are either dead and buried, or else have become mainstream and hence frozen in a web of backward-compatibility constraints. Haskell is different: it is in rude health, is widely used (but not too widely!), and is still in a state of furious innovation.

In this talk I'll reflect on this two-decade journey, I'll discuss Haskell's birth and evolution, including some of the research and engineering challenges we faced in design and implementation. I'll focus particularly on the ideas that have turned out, in retrospect, to be most important and influential, as well as sketching some current developments and making some wild guesses about the future.

Simon Peyton JonesA concept we refer to as the biological constraint is shown to be able where id=11; to explain the effectiveness of mathematical descriptions of the universe, as well as accounting for the origin of life and our ability to think logically. The biological constraint, which can be studied systematically through the use of appropriate models, refers to selection in the biological realm in favour of mechanisms that have wide applicability, a subset of which have mathematical character that can evolve to ever subtler forms. The precise conformance of physical phenomena to precise mathematical laws is related to the enforcement of symmetry.

On OriginsA concept we refer to as the biological constraint is shown to be able to explain the effectiveness of mathematical descriptions of the universe, as well as accounting for the origin of life and our ability to think logically. The biological constraint, which can be studied systematically through the use of appropriate models, refers to selection in the biological realm in favour of mechanisms that have wide applicability, a subset of which have mathematical character that can evolve to ever subtler forms. The precise conformance of physical phenomena to precise mathematical laws is related to the enforcement of symmetry.

Brian JosephsonA concept we refer to as the biological constraint is shown to be able to explain the effectiveness of mathematical descriptions of the universe, as well as accounting for the origin of life and our ability to think logically. The biological constraint, which can be studied systematically through the use of appropriate models, refers to selection in the biological realm in favour of mechanisms that have wide applicability, a subset of which have mathematical character that can evolve to ever subtler forms. The precise conformance of physical phenomena to precise mathematical laws is related to the enforcement of symmetry.

Unsupervised Machine Learning and LinguisticsThe fundamental problem of linguistics is to find how knowledge of language is represented and how that knowledge is acquired by children learning their first language; understanding or solving this problem would open the door to a new generation of intelligent language processing systems. This is fundamentally a computational problem, which can be studied using the tools of formal language theory and computational learning. Solving it requires reconceptualising some basic concepts -- including the relationship between a grammar and the language it defines.

In this talk I will give an overview of this field (assuming no prior knowledge of linguistics or machine learning) and discuss some recent technical results in distributional learning that can potentially provide a solution to this problem. These techniques involve modelling the relationship between substrings and the contexts that they can appear in -- these give rise to algorithms for learning classes of context free and context sensitive languages that seem to be a good match for the properties of natural language.

Alex ClarkA concept we refer to as the biological constraint is shown to be able where id=11; to explain the effectiveness of mathematical descriptions of the universe, as well as accounting for the origin of life and our ability to think logically. The biological constraint, which can be studied systematically through the use of appropriate models, refers to selection in the biological realm in favour of mechanisms that have wide applicability, a subset of which have mathematical character that can evolve to ever subtler forms. The precise conformance of physical phenomena to precise mathematical laws is related to the enforcement of symmetry.

Don't Get Your Face Stolen! A Talk on ePassport CryptographyWith the introduction of electronic passports containing sensitive biometric information like fingerprints and iris scans, we face a new world of challenges. How do we allow a legitimate inspection system to read the passport while at the same time ensure that nobody else can? This talk discusses the advanced cryptography, primitives, and protocols involved in ePassports and inspection systems.

Jan KjærsgaardA concept we refer to as the biological constraint is shown to be able where id=11; to explain the effectiveness of mathematical descriptions of the universe, as well as accounting for the origin of life and our ability to think logically. The biological constraint, which can be studied systematically through the use of appropriate models, refers to selection in the biological realm in favour of mechanisms that have wide applicability, a subset of which have mathematical character that can evolve to ever subtler forms. The precise conformance of physical phenomena to precise mathematical laws is related to the enforcement of symmetry.

Imaginary Interfaces: Interacting Spatially Without Visual FeedbackTo increase mobility, designers are creating ever smaller mobile devices. After a certain point they are so small that a screen cannot be included and the device no longer supports any sort of spatial interaction (such as pointing) because, seemingly, there is nothing to point at. In this talk, I will present Imaginary Interfaces, a vision of hypermobile devices that rejects this notion. These completely non-visual interfaces retain the model of spatial interaction by sensing where the user is pointing in free space or on their body. I will present a depth camera based prototype, called Imaginary Phone, which allows users to operate a real iPhone by mimicking iPhone interaction on their empty palm and a set user studies that explore methods of learning a non-visual pointing environment.

Sean GustafsonA concept we refer to as the biological constraint is shown to be able where id=11; to explain the effectiveness of mathematical descriptions of the universe, as well as accounting for the origin of life and our ability to think logically. The biological constraint, which can be studied systematically through the use of appropriate models, refers to selection in the biological realm in favour of mechanisms that have wide applicability, a subset of which have mathematical character that can evolve to ever subtler forms. The precise conformance of physical phenomena to precise mathematical laws is related to the enforcement of symmetry.

Great Ideas of Computing Science: from Aristotle to EuclidGreat ideas tell us how to think: how to think effectively about many areas of essential interest to us, because they tell us about ourselves and about the world we live in. They embody principles that endure and evolve over a long period of time. They form the basis of a teaching syllabus for the education of students at school and at Universities. The application of great ideas brings cultural, intellectual, moral, and/or economic benefit to those who adopt and exploit them. And a great idea is often associated with the name of a great thinker, who first formulated and propagated the principles in published form.

It is much easier to recognise great ideas that have been formulated a long time ago, for example in the civilization of Ancient Greece. We know that these ideas have already stood the test of time; they have already been taught to our schoolchildren and university students through many generations. And their continuing relevance to today's world of computers and Computer Science are convincing evidence of their versatility and their enduring power to deliver benefit to mankind.

This lecture will concentrate on Aristotle's logic, and Euclid's geometry, and draw interesting analogies with some of the basic principles of Computer Science.

Tony HoareA concept we refer to as the biological constraint is shown to be able where id=11; to explain the effectiveness of mathematical descriptions of the universe, as well as accounting for the origin of life and our ability to think logically. The biological constraint, which can be studied systematically through the use of appropriate models, refers to selection in the biological realm in favour of mechanisms that have wide applicability, a subset of which have mathematical character that can evolve to ever subtler forms. The precise conformance of physical phenomena to precise mathematical laws is related to the enforcement of symmetry.

Photonic Quantum Information Science and TechnologiesThe theory of quantum mechanics was developed at the beginning of the twentieth century to better explain the spectra of light emitted by atoms. At the time, many people believed that physics was almost completely understood, with only a few remaining anomalies to be ‘ironed out’. The full theory of quantum mechanics emerged as a completely unexpected description of nature at a fundamental level. It portrays a world that is fundamentally probabilistic, where a single object can be in two places at once—superposition—and where two objects in remote locations can be instantaneously connected—entanglement. These unusual properties have been observed, and quantum mechanics remains the most successful theory ever developed, in terms of the precision of its predictions. Today, we are learning how to harness these surprising quantum effects to realize profoundly new quantum technologies. This lecture will examine how single particles of light—photons—are being used to develop secure communication systems based on the laws of physics, precision measurements using entangled light, and information processors that promise exponentially greater computational power for particular tasks.

Jeremy O'BrienA concept we refer to as the biological constraint is shown to be able where id=11; to explain the effectiveness of mathematical descriptions of the universe, as well as accounting for the origin of life and our ability to think logically. The biological constraint, which can be studied systematically through the use of appropriate models, refers to selection in the biological realm in favour of mechanisms that have wide applicability, a subset of which have mathematical character that can evolve to ever subtler forms. The precise conformance of physical phenomena to precise mathematical laws is related to the enforcement of symmetry.