Event overview
Psychology and Computing welcome Professor Tim Rogers, Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience UCL, to deliver a Whitehead lecture on How would we know if a machine "has concepts"?
How would we know if a machine "has concepts"?
Contemporary AI technologies offer a remarkable simulacrum of human language, to the extent that they are now in regular use in contexts ranging from computer programming to essay writing to virtual dating. Given their general effectiveness in many settings, it seems reasonable to ask whether these systems "have concepts": do they "understand" their language input and the responses that they generate? Do they "know" about the world? If they do, how would we tell? These questions have also been posed of other intelligent behaving systems, including animals, infants and children, people with atypical patterns of neuro-cognitive development, and patients suffering from cognitive and language impairments following brain injury. Over the years scientists have innovated clever ways of assessing what kinds of language and cognitive behaviors such populations can/cannot do, which provide a toolbox for evaluating contemporary AI capabilities. In this talk I will suggest that current models show patterns of success and failure that are unlike any naturally intelligent system, and that such patterns highlight aspects of human cognition and language that, while not really recognized in most prior work, may be essential to what we mean by the word "concept."
Tim Rogers is a Professor at the Institute for Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London. His work combines computer simulation, brain imaging, and behavioral studies of healthy and brain-damaged populations to aid our understanding of human cognition. He is co-author of the book Semantic Cognition, which used neural networks as the basis for a theory of human conceptual knowledge. In 2025 he was awarded the Elman Prize for scientific achievement and community-building.
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Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 22 Oct 2026 | 4:00pm - 5:30pm |
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