Project title: Reasoning, consciousness and artificial intelligence
Project description: I want to explore the nature of reasoning from the perspective of philosophy and psychology, and computationally simulate the reasoning faculty in the human mind from the perspective of computational psychology. One of my project ideas is inspired by the book on behavioral economics by Daniel Kahneman called Thinking, Fast and Slow. It describes a lot of cognitive biases, such as confirmation bias, anchoring bias and the halo effect. I believe it will benefit our insight into human reasoning process if I can explain and model these cognitive biases with computational modelling.
Most important accomplishment: Learning how to play basketball.
Reflections on the College Scholar Program: Being a College Scholar allows me to fully pursue my interests in modelling and exploring the properties of human’s reasoning process. I have more time to take relevant courses from psychology, computer science and philosophy. I also got assigned to a mentor for this College Scholar program who is a psychology professor and has similar interests. I have learnt a lot just by talking to him about all my ideas that are related to artificial intelligence, human cognitive biases, philosophy of religions, etc., and receiving guidance on how I can start off my project. Also, being with other College Scholars, who are all deeply passionate about their research interests, I feel more motivated to see the world from new perspectives and enhance my intellectual depth.