Welcome to the Cognitive Systems Laboratory
Computers have come to play a central role in many fields, one of the
most important being the study of intelligent behavior. This includes
work on learning and adaptation, in which experience leads to improved
performance on some task. In the last decade, advances in the
computational study of this process have led to powerful insights
about the nature of learning in both humans and machines. The
resulting computational techniques have led to an increasing number of
applications within both commerce and government.
However, one can apply the computational metaphor in different ways,
and computational learning has become an important topic within many
paradigms, including artificial intelligence, pattern recognition,
control theory, cognitive psychology, and statistics. Such convergence
of interests is encouraging, but few researchers in this active area
communicate across disciplinary boundaries, and even fewer are skilled
in the language and techniques of more than one approach. This leads
to duplication of effort, repetition of conceptual errors, and missed
insights that could come from interdisciplinary collaboration.
The Cognitive Systems Laboratory carries out a number of activities
designed to bridge the gap that separates these paradigms. For example,
we have active research efforts in a number of areas, most of them
involving collaboration with people elsewhere at Stanford or other
organizations. We also organize a weekly seminar on computational
learning and adaptation, which attracts scientists from a number of
Stanford departments and local research centers. Talks address topics
that hold general interest to learning researchers, presented in
language accessible to people with different backgrounds. We also
distribute the Machine Learning List, which sends out announcements
in the area to hundreds of recipients.
This Web site contains more information about the Cognitive Systems
Laboratory and its activities. I hope you find its contents interesting
and useful, but I would also welcome suggestions for improving it.
Pat Langley, Head
Cognitive Systems Laboratory
Center for the Study of Language & Information
Stanford University
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