The Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST, President Kwang-Hyung Lee) announced on the 4th that the research team of Professor Sung-Jin Ahn of the Department of Computer Science and AI, along with Professor Yoshua Bengio of Canada, an authority on artificial intelligence (AI), established the ‘KAIST-MILA Prefrontal Artificial Intelligence Research Center’ as of July 1st.
This project is a component of the ‘2024 Overseas Excellent Research Institute Cooperation Hub Construction Project’ supported by the Ministry of Science and ICT and the National Research Foundation of Korea, and Professor Ahn Sung-jin’s research team will receive a complete of two.7 billion won in support from July 2024 to December 2028. The middle is anticipated to function a hub for international joint research for the event of next-generation AI technology.
The core of this study is the event of ‘System 2’ AI technology that mimics human high-level cognitive abilities. System 2 is an idea presented in Daniel Kahneman’s dual process theory, and in contrast to ‘System 1’, which is liable for intuitive and fast cognition, it performs functions which can be liable for complex and sequential thought processes corresponding to mathematical logical reasoning.
This process mainly takes place within the frontal lobe of the brain, and manages higher-order cognitive functions corresponding to planning, judgment, and reasoning. Despite the advancement of enormous language models (LLMs), current deep learning technology still has limitations in effectively implementing these higher-order cognitive functions.
This study goals to beat these limitations and secure the essential technology to implement ‘prefrontal AI’ that integrates the high-level cognitive functions of the frontal lobe into AI.
Professor Seung-Hoon Hong of KAIST and Professor Sung-Soo Ahn of Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH) may even participate as joint researchers on this study. Professor Seung-Hoon Hong will research System 2 meta-learning algorithms, and Professor Sung-Soo Ahn will conduct research to use System 2 functions to ‘AI for Science (AI4Science)’ applications.
Professor Ahn Sung-jin said, “Our collaboration with Professor Yoshua Bengio will likely be a very important milestone in the event of next-generation AI technology,” adding, “Through this research, we are going to have the opportunity to develop deep learning algorithms that mimic the higher-level cognitive functions performed by the human prefrontal cortex, and establish a technological foundation for implementing protected and reliable artificial intelligence agents.”
Reporter Park Soo-bin sbin08@aitimes.com
