Joe Barnby

@nitalon.bsky.social , @reuth-mirsky.bsky.social , @stefansarkadi.bsky.social and I have been putting together a book! 📖 *Theory of Mind in Natural and Artificial Intelligence* coming out early next year 🧵

To mark the book we’re hosting a series of events at @aaai.org , MIT, and Tufts, bringing together chapter authors and the broader field to discuss ToM across cog sci, comp sci, and psychiatry.

@nitalon.bsky.social , @reuth-mirsky.bsky.social , @stefansarkadi.bsky.social and I have been putting together a book! 📖 *Theory of Mind in Natural and Artificial Intelligence* coming out early next year 🧵

This is an interdisciplinary text covering Theory of Mind from cognitive science, computer science, psychiatry, and multi-agent systems. A rich overview about how minds model minds.

Exciting news from Hypatia 🎊 we were lucky enough to win Best R&D Innovation at the Aussie INCITE Awards! Huge congrats to the team, and thanks to the judges for their confidence in us. ALSO: We're hiring 2 roles (research manager & business/ops developer) within Hypatia... 👇

Business/Ops Development Manager: support the business angle within our medtech innovation, turning world-class research into real-world impact. Experience in value proposition & market strategy in biotech/medtech/healthcare, ready to shape Hypatia's future. external.jobs.uwa.edu.au/cw/en/job/52...

Exciting news from Hypatia 🎊 we were lucky enough to win Best R&D Innovation at the Aussie INCITE Awards! Huge congrats to the team, and thanks to the judges for their confidence in us. ALSO: We're hiring 2 roles (research manager & business/ops developer) within Hypatia... 👇

How do exclusion and adversity drive social learning in adolescence? Here, @drjk.bsky.social, Lyn Ellett and I show that social exclusion reduces adolescent belief flexibility about others at a later point in time, and reduces the ability to generalise from social cues - 🧵 1/5

...pre-exclusion in the cyberball (relatively trivial exclusion!) increased state paranoia, and caused adolescents to become less sensitive to incoming social cues, making participants' beliefs more fixed and diminishing the impact of other-to-self information transfer.

How do exclusion and adversity drive social learning in adolescence? Here, @drjk.bsky.social, Lyn Ellett and I show that social exclusion reduces adolescent belief flexibility about others at a later point in time, and reduces the ability to generalise from social cues - 🧵 1/5

502 adolescents (15-17) played an interactive pre-task Cyberball, where they were either excluded or included, and then took part in the Intentions Game (elifesciences.org/articles/104...) to make and predict another's social decisions. We examined both behavioural and computational outcomes...

What connects difficulties in social cognition, self-awareness, and abstract reasoning in those with Corpus Callosum Dysgenesis (CCD)? Here, across three experiments, we find that the corpus callosum is integral to metacognitive efficiency - www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

We suggest that the absence of a CC is causing a nonsystematic computational failure. This would explain why those with CCD struggle to notice social and reasoning errors in classic neuropsych tests, and suggests a crucial role of the CC in metacognition code/data: github.com/Brain-Develo...

What connects difficulties in social cognition, self-awareness, and abstract reasoning in those with Corpus Callosum Dysgenesis (CCD)? Here, across three experiments, we find that the corpus callosum is integral to metacognitive efficiency - www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Excited to say that Hypatia has secured a second round of funding thanks to the @wellcometrust.bsky.social 💫 This milestone allows us to build the technology and team and conduct validation efforts across the UK and Australia to bridge the ecosystems.

We are incredibly grateful to @wellcometrust.bsky.social, @kingsioppn.bsky.social, University of Western Australia, and @perroninstitute.bsky.social for supporting the vision. If you're into computational modelling, mental health, or UX, watch out for the application links.

Excited to say that Hypatia has secured a second round of funding thanks to the @wellcometrust.bsky.social 💫 This milestone allows us to build the technology and team and conduct validation efforts across the UK and Australia to bridge the ecosystems.

What happens when we can't use recursive belief to compete? We can use anomaly detection instead! Here, we (led by soon-to-be-Dr @nitalon.bsky.social ) devise a multi-agent account where compression & reward expectation are used to notice deception jair.org/index.php/ja...

The model offers another multi-agent route to paranoia alongside hypermentalising. If the anomaly detector is tuned too tightly, it yields false +ves. The agent becomes overly defensive against benign peers. This connects generalist accounts of delusions to social contexts.

What happens when we can't use recursive belief to compete? We can use anomaly detection instead! Here, we (led by soon-to-be-Dr @nitalon.bsky.social ) devise a multi-agent account where compression & reward expectation are used to notice deception jair.org/index.php/ja...

It augments agents with and ℵ-IPOMDP mechanism: 1. Anomaly Detection mechanisms: "My predictions are consistently wrong." 2. Out-of-Belief Policy: A severely 'defensive' response. In effect: 'I don't know _how_ you're tricking me, but I know you are, so stop or we'll both suffer'

What happens when we can't use recursive belief to compete? We can use anomaly detection instead! Here, we (led by soon-to-be-Dr @nitalon.bsky.social ) devise a multi-agent account where compression & reward expectation are used to notice deception jair.org/index.php/ja...