What makes representations “useful”?

Ben Baker, Richard Lange, Alessandro Achille, Rosa Cao, Nikolaus Kriegeskorte, Odelia Schwartz, Xaq Pitkow

TL;DR: Scientific question(s): 1. What makes representations “useful,” both in terms of their content and their form? 2. How does the use or downstream causal effect of a representation contribute to its meaning?

Abstract:

Scientific question: Internal representations play a central role in the study of both biological and
artificial intelligence, as well as in philosophy of mind, but what precisely defines a representation is
challenging to pin down. Across disciplines, one common thread is that representations are typically
“useful” in some sense. Centering around this concept of usefulness, we propose a cross-disciplinary
GAC to share ideas and develop more precise answers to the following questions:
1. What makes representations “useful,” both in terms of their content and their form?
2. How does the use or downstream causal effect of a representation contribute to its meaning?
We will simplify the scope by primarily discussing these questions in the context of visual perception.