Postdoc position (8-11 months, 1.0fte) and PhD internship at VU Amsterdam: Analogical reasoning in educational materials

Hi all!

We have a position open for a Postdoc (8 months, with a possible extension
to 11 months; 1.0fte) and/or a paid PhD internship at VU Amsterdam, to
study how to measure and advance the ability of AI models to draw
systematic analogies between educational materials. Analogical reasoning is
a core cognitive skill unique to humans (Penn et al., 2008; Hofstadter,
2001). It can be defined as the ability to perceive and utilize the
similarities between situations or events based on (systems of) relations
rather than surface similarities (Holyoak, 2012; Gentner et al.). Recent
work has shown that analogical reasoning over systems of relations, as
opposed to proportional analogies, poses a challenge for state-of-the-art
AI, including large language models.



The goal of this project will be to use analogies to guide human learning
based on knowledge about the skills that a person already has. It will be
integrated into the Humane AI project, which entails collaboration with
European partners. As part of the process, we intend to develop a benchmark
for evaluating analogies in education, together with a method based on
identifying structural patterns in the skill descriptions. The work will be
tightly coupled with cognitive psychology theories of analogy.



We look for candidates with a background in NLP, cognitive psychology, or
reasoning. The starting date is as soon as possible - applications will be
reviewed on a first-come-first-serve basis.



For more information and to express interest, feel free to contact:



Filip Ilievski <f.ilievski@vu.nl>

Assistant Professor (UD1), Vrije Universiteit (VU) Amsterdam

website <http://www.ilievski.info/> | Q100107129
<https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q100107129> | scholar
<https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=4ZScBc0AAAAJ>