Dr. Jeanine Salla

Dr. Salla began her research career as a graduate student under Allen Hobby during his last years at the Aragon Institute of Technology. The project she started there—directing the course of AI skill acquisition in open-field environments by simulating "motivation"—still guides her research today. "Like any bright child, the current generation of sophisticated AI’s are capable of astonishing feats of learning. But also like any bright child, the AI has to want to learn. In my lab we focus on I want. AI’s do not have the benefit of a limbic system, a morning cup of coffee, or the insights of Freud when deciding what matters to them. A smart machine can be given relatively simple rule sets to govern its behavior, but a true Evolving Intelligence requires a persistent, dynamic, flexible-yet-targeted urge to grow."

Dr. Salla’s work on simulating human emotion fields has found its way into several of the astonishingly "lifelike" AI’s Dr. Hobby has developed for Cybertronics. The Cybertronics partnership has proved a fertile one for both parties; fully half the graduate students in Dr. Salla’s lab intern in Cybertronics’ Advanced Design Lab at some point in their graduate careers.

Dr. Salla’s work with neurochemists and biological modeling led to the development of the WeatherglassII™ sim, still the best predictor of bi-polar mood swing gradients. Her interest in society at large as a mediator for motivation led to the Good Citizen robot, an integral part of the Civility Meme campaign designed at BWU-NY and deployed by the City of New York throughout the Hudson archipelago.

Students considering graduate work in the Salla lab should have some background in at least two of the following fields: neuroprogramming; computational psychology; endocrinology (wet or simulated); complexity mathematics; recursive logic; behavioral psychology (wet or simulated); mediation; data mechanics; artificial communities; human/AI interaction; robot design; ambient studies.

You may leave a message for Dr. Salla at 212 502-1177, or
jsalla@bangaloreworldu-in.co.nz

And don't worry, Dr. Salla, I would never want to see your security compromised by picking something really obvious for your passcode, like your middle name. Your secrets are safe with me!

Your loyal, overworked, largely unappreciated, and yet strangely STILL un-named

Administrative Intelligence

Follow this link to a short treatise on the co-evolution of intelligences by one of my favorite pupils.