Keynote Lecture: Yasuo Kuniyoshi

From Embodiment To Super-Embodiment: A Constructive Approach To Open-Ended And Human Aligned Intelligence/Moral

Yasuo Kuniyoshi, University of Tokyo
Director of Next Generation Artificial Intelligence Research Center

Embodiment is crucial for resolving the reliability and alignment challenges in contemporary AI. This is because it imposes consistent constraints on the entire agent-environment interactions and generate information structures without specifying their actual contents, and the constraints are common to those with similar embodiment. This concept must extend beyond mechanical properties and sensory information structure to include internal organs, metabolism, mental processes, and inter-agent interactions, evolving into "super-embodiment." Super-embodiment can address sensibilities, values, and morals, aligning AI with humans toward artificial humanity. This talk will demonstrate the emergence and development of behaviors and cognition from this extended embodiment framework through experiments with embodied models, including a simulated human fetus and internal organs integrated with the central nervous system.

Yasuo Kuniyoshi received Ph.D. from The University of Tokyo in 1991 and joined Electrotechnical Laboratory, AIST, MITI, Japan. From 1996 to 1997 he was a Visiting Scholar at MIT AI Lab. In 2001 he was appointed as an Associate Professor and then full Professor in 2005 at The University of Tokyo. He is also the Director of RIKEN CBS-Toyota Collaboration Center (BTCC) since 2012, the Director of Next Generation Artificial Intelligence Research Center of The University of Tokyo since 2016, and an affiliate member of International Research Center for Neurointelligence (IRCN) of The University of Tokyo since 2018. He published over 300 refereed academic papers and received IJCAI Outstanding Paper Award, Gold Medal "Tokyo Techno-Forum21" Award, Best Paper Awards from Robotics Society of Japan, IEEE ROBIO T.-J. Tarn Best Paper Award in Robotics, Okawa Publications Prize, and other awards. He is a Fellow of Robotics Society of Japan, President of the Japan Society of Developmental Neuroscience, and a member of IEEE, Japan Society of Artificial Intelligence, Information Processing Society of Japan, Japanese Society of Baby Science.