Project description
Computational modelling to understand artificial agent behaviour
Improving our understanding of how artificial agents learn, reason and make decisions is essential. With this in mind, the ERC-funded TACOS project aims to use tools from cognitive psychology to enhance the behaviour of opaque artificial agents. Specifically, the project will concentrate on foundation models and large neural networks containing billions of parameters. It will use psychological paradigms to investigate these models and assess their behaviour through computational modelling. Additionally, the team will refine behaviour using cognitive therapy techniques. The project seeks to develop transparent and human-like agents while fostering an interdisciplinary research field that bridges cognitive psychology and AI research.
Objective
With the advent of capable artificial agents comes the urgency to improve our understanding of how they learn, reason, and decide. This proposal aims to shape a new field of artificial cognitive science in which tools from cognitive psychology are used to understand and improve the behavior of the notoriously opaque artificial agents to which we increasingly delegate autonomy and authority. We will focus on the newly-emerged, disruptive, and increasingly powerful foundation models, huge neural networks with billion of parameters that are trained on hundreds of billions of words, and study them using tools from cognitive psychology. We will subject these models to experimental paradigms from the psychological literature and analyze their trial-by-trial behavior using detailed computational modeling. Psychological paradigms have been engineered to uncover precisely the mechanisms that underpin behavior. We will use cognitive psychology to study and improve prompt engineering, i.e. the design of textual inputs to these models that lead to a desired behavior. Afterward, we will build large cognitive benchmarks to assess foundation models' learning, decision-making, and reasoning abilities in both the pure language and the combined language and vision domains. Finally, we will attempt to improve these models' behavior using cognitive therapy. This proposal will help to create transparent and human-like agents and define an innovative and interdisciplinary research field in which cognitive psychologists and artificial intelligence researchers jointly examine and improve intelligent systems.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
MAIN PROGRAMME
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Topic(s)
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
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Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2023-STG
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
85764 Neuherberg
Germany
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.