The Minds & Machines Lab/Program
- Overview -

Director: Selmer Bringsjord www.rpi.edu/$\sim$brings
Assistant Director: Ron Noel noelr@rpi.edu
Program site: www.rpi.edu/dept/ppcs/MM/mm.uc.html

  

Figure 1: One Central Image Says It All

Prepares students to build, and manage the building and use of, autonomously smart machines:

• artificial agents
• spiders
• robots
• 
• expert systems
• $\vdots$

Prepares students to build, and manage the building and use of, machine systems (and other advanced technologies, e.g, ones involving neuroscience) designed to make us -- minds -- smarter:

• systems allowing for human psychopresence
• smart flight/land/sea simulators
• systems that learn and adapt to human use (e.g., adaptive web browsers, adaptive on-line examinations)
• intelligent searchers and data miners
• systems for addressing key problems plaguing minds (e.g., addiction)
• advanced educational technologies (e.g., immersive distance learning and intelligent tutoring systems)
• $\vdots$

General Areas of Study/Employment - Loads of Jobs at High Starting Salaries:

• Gaming
• Software Development and Engineering
• Intelligent Agents
  • 
• Information Systems/Knowledge Engineering
• Logic and Expert Systems
• Robotics and Psychology
• Human-Computer Interface
• Cognitive Ergonomics/Human Factors
• Neuroscience

M&M is fueled by team-based research projects falling under sustained research themes, e.g.,

• The Gaming Mind
• Psychopresence
• Creative Agents
• Cognitive Robotics
  • 
  • 
  • $\vdots$
• Cognition and Advanced Transport
  • ``triple crown" simulator
• Legal Machines
• Super-Minds
  • 
  • $\vdots$
• Models of Addiction

How do I sign up? How do I become ``official"? How do I get access to the M&M Lab?

- in structure, like MIT's Media Lab

1.

Apply by telling Selmer Bringsjord, the Director, something about yourself, your background, your interests in connection with our research themes.

2.

If accepted, select and have signed appropriate undergraduate curriculum for Registrar, one that marries study of machines with study of minds, e.g.,

• Comp Sci/Psych, Comp Sci/Phil dual major
• BS in IT and Psych
• EE or CSE or MechE $\ldots$/Phil or Psych dual major

3.

email Director a simple ASCI bio for the official on-line list of enrolled undergrads

4.

you go on the official on-line list of students in the Lab/Program, and you're in the email list for meetings, lunches, research opportunities, etc.

5.

sign Lab Policy/Agreement and you're given combo for M&M Lab; later: enter your fingerprint or retina pattern in security database for M&M Lab

Finally, the M&M Lab/Program is designed so as to

• the ultimate in ``value added" education: adds knowledge of minds to knowledge of machines, a package that will win out over straight computer skills when going for that hot, high-paying job;
• have students generate web-based portfolios that can be referenced by potential employers;
• cultivate the ability to write and speak in clear compelling English -- by having papers, debates and discussions revolve around the fun, fascinating ``big" philosophical issues raised by Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, and Cognitive Science.