8 accepted papers
In control problems and basic scientific modeling, it is important to compare observations with dynamical simulations. For example, comparing two neural systems can shed light on the nature of emergent computations in the brain and deep neural networks. Recently, Ostrow et al. (2023) introduced Dyn…
Understanding the behavior of deep reinforcement learning (DRL) agents—particularly as task and agent sophistication increase—requires more than simple comparison of reward curves, yet standard methods for behavioral analysis remain underdeveloped in DRL. We apply tools from neuroscience and etholog…
Learning rules—prescriptions for updating model parameters to improve performance—are typically assumed rather than derived. Why do some learning rules work better than others, and under what assumptions can a given rule be considered optimal? We propose a theoretical framework that casts learning r…
Task-trained recurrent neural networks (RNNs) are widely used in neuroscience and machine learning to model dynamical computations. To gain mechanistic insight into how neural systems solve tasks, prior work often reverse-engineers individual trained networks. However, different RNNs trained on the…
Military weapon systems and command-and-control infrastructure augmented by artificial intelligence (AI) have seen rapid development and deployment in recent years. However, the sociotechnical impacts of AI on combat systems, military decision-making, and the norms of warfare have been understudied…
Predicting future neural activity is a core challenge in modeling brain dynamics, with applications ranging from scientific investigation to closed-loop neurotechnology. While recent models of population activity emphasize interpretability and behavioral decoding, neural forecasting—particularly acr…
The recent embrace of machine learning (ML) in the development of autonomous weapons systems (AWS) creates serious risks to geopolitical stability and the free exchange of ideas in AI research. This topic has received comparatively little attention of late compared to risks stemming from superintell…
We present a novel approach to use curricula to identify principles by which a system learns. Previous work in curriculum learning has focused on how curricula can be designed to improve learning of a model on particular tasks. We consider the inverse problem: what can a curriculum tell us about how…