Introduction to the orientation held on June 5th, 2021, for the online AI competition to implement working memory https://wba-initiative.org/en/18687/

1. The 5th
Whole Brain Architecture
Hackathon Orientation
June 2021
The Whole Brain Architecture Initiative
&
Cerenaut

2. Introduction
●Background
○ Who we are
○ The Whole Brain Architecture Approach
○ WBA Hackathons
○ Gist of the Hackathon
●Competition
○ Gist of the Competition
○ Evaluation
00h00〜00h10

3. Background

4. Who we are
We are partners
The Whole Brain Architecture Initiative
the Non-profit Organization
&
Cerenaut
for creating brain-inspired
artificial general intelligence

5. International collaborations
● WBAI (Japan)
● Luria (New York)
● Numenta (co-authored Boosted RSM)
Understand animal intelligence / the brain
Improve machine intelligence
○ Independent Research Group
○ Interested in interaction of brain regions for
intelligent behaviour and decision making
Cerenaut
Supervise graduate students at
Monash
Founded in 2018, Publishing since 2012

6. Mission: to promote the open development of
Whole Brain Architecture
The Whole Brain Architecture Approach

7. The Whole Brain Architecture Approach
‘to create a human-like artificial general intelligence (AGI)
by learning from the architecture of the entire brain.’
AGI
Artificial General Intelligence
≒ Human-like/Human-level AI
The WBA Approach
to mimic/reverse-engineer the human brain
having general intelligence

8. WBA Hackathons
for knowledge and skills amelioration and socializing among
students/researchers in computational neuroscience and AI
Key Concept
Hackathon
theme
The Whole Brain
Architecture
Core Hypothesis
Open platform
strategy
Start learning from
the Brain
Combined ML
Cognitive
Architecture with
LIS (3D simulation
environment)
Tactile
mini-Hackathon,
Hippocampus
Hackathon
2015 2016 2017 2018
Providing a brain
reference
architecture
Tasks performed
with gaze control

9. The gist of the 5th
WBA Hackathon
❖ To implement Working Memory
❖ To solve Match-to-Sample Tasks
❖ A sample (brain-inspired) cognitive architecture
provided
❖ Biological plausibility to be evaluated

10. Working Memory
● Short-term memory used in performing tasks
○ Used in any task that requires remembering
recent past
● A building block of intelligence
● Not really has been addressed in
artificial-neural-network-oriented AI
So it is a challenge!

11. The Competition

12. Competition
● Period: May 〜 August, 2021
● On the CodaLab AI competition platform
● Code on GitHub will be examined.
● Evaluation 〜 September, 2021
● Max 100,000 JPY reward

13. Evaluation
Your submission will be evaluated with:
● Task performances
● Biological plausibility of your code
○ Written justification required
○ The code will be inspected.

14. The rest of the session
• Introduction: 0h00-0h10
• Task details: 0h10-0h25
• Neuroscientific issues: 0h25-0h35
• Architecture details: 0h35-0h50
• Instruction on the CodaLab competition: 0h50-1h00
• Intermission with Q&A including a commercial: 1h00-1h15
• Hands-on session: 1h15-2h00