Event overview
Tom Griffiths on "The Laws of Thought"
ABSTRACT:
Everyone has a basic understanding of how the physical world works–the Laws of Nature. But we don’t have the same fluency with concepts needed to understand the world inside us–the Laws of Thought. In this lecture I will trace this idea from its origins in the 19th century to the creation of modern AI systems, exploring how people have approached the challenge of using mathematics to describe the mind. I will explain the three major approaches to formalizing thought–rules and symbols, neural networks, and probability and statistics–introducing each idea through the stories of the people behind it.
BRIEF BIOGRAPHY:
Tom Griffiths is the Henry R. Luce Professor of Information Technology, Consciousness and Culture in the Departments of Psychology and Computer Science at Princeton University, where he is also the Director of the new AI Lab. His research explores connections between human and machine learning, using ideas from statistics and artificial intelligence to understand how people solve the challenging computational problems they encounter in everyday life. He has made contributions to the development of Bayesian models of cognition, probabilistic machine learning, nonparametric Bayesian statistics, and models of cultural evolution, and his recent work has demonstrated how methods from cognitive science can shed light on modern artificial intelligence systems. Tom completed his PhD in Psychology at Stanford University in 2005, and taught at Brown University and the University of California, Berkeley before moving to Princeton. He has received awards for his research from organizations ranging from the American Psychological Association to the National Academy of Sciences and is a co-author of the book Algorithms to Live By, introducing ideas from computer science and cognitive science to a general audience. His new book The Laws of Thought tells the story of the quest to find a mathematical theory of the mind and came out in February 2026.
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 5 Mar 2026 |
5:00pm - 6:00pm All are welcome, also to the book launch after the lecture. |
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