Rationality Enhancement
Appointment
03-12-2024
Dr. Felso
Valkyrie Felso successfully defended her dissertation
Valkyrie Felso
Rationality Enhancement
Appointment
01-07-2023
Falk Lieder becomes Assistant Professor at UCLA
Falk Lieder
Rationality Enhancement
News
31-07-2022
''Boosting human decision-making with AI-generated decision aids” is going to be published!
Our work „Boosting human decision-making with AI-generated decision aids" has been accepted in Computational Brain & Behavior. We extend our interpretability method for automated description of planning strategies and show that it can help people make better, more farsighted decisions. Our findings suggest that AI-powered boosting might have potential for improving human decision-making in the real world.
Frederic Becker
Julian Skirzynski
Falk Lieder
Rationality Enhancement
Award
28-04-2022
NHB Article
Nature Human Behaviour article on the computational mechanisms of human planning
Rationality Enhancement
News
21-03-2022
Our RLDM abstract got accepted!
Our article on ''What to learn next? Aligning gamification rewards to long-term goals using reinforcement learning'' has been accepted at RLDM 2022. Congratulations Reena, Lovis, Victoria, and Falk!
Nowadays, more people can access digital educational resources than ever before. However, access alone is often not sufficient for learners to fulfil their learning goals. To support motivation, learning environments are often gamified, meaning that they offer points for interacting with them. But gamification can add to learners’ tendencies to choose learning activities in a short-sighted manner. An example for a short-sighted choice bias is the preference for an easy task offering a quick sense of accomplishment (and in gamified environments often a quick accumulation of points) over a harder task offering to make real progress. The concept of optimal brain points demonstrates that methods from the field of reinforcement learning, specifically reward shaping, allow us to align short-term rewards for learning choices with their expected long-term benefit in a learning context. Building on that work, we here present a scalable approach to supporting self-directed learning in digital learning environments applicable to real-world educational games. It can motivate learners to choose the learning activities that are most beneficial for them in the long run. This is achieved by incentivizing each learning activity in a way that reflects how much progress can be made by completing it and how thatprogress relates to their learning goal. Specifically, the approach entails modelling how learners choose between learning activities as a Markov Decision Process and applying methods from reinforcement learning to compute which learning choices optimize the learners progress based on their current knowledge. We specify how our developed method can be applied to the English-learning App “Dawn of Civilisation”. We further present the first evaluation of the approach in a controlled online experiment with a simplified learning task, which showed that the derived incentives can significantly improve both learners’ choice behaviour and their learning outcomes.
Reena Pauly
Lovis Heindrich
Victoria Amo
Falk Lieder
Rationality Enhancement
News
15-03-2022
New article on AI-powered boosting
Our work „Boosting human decision-making with AI-generated decision aids" is now available on Arvix. We extend our method for automated discovery and description of planning strategies via
#XRL, and show that it can help people make better, more farsighted decisions.
Frederic Becker
Julian Skirzynski
Falk Lieder
Rationality Enhancement
News
01-02-2022
Leveraging Artificial Intelligence to Improve People's Planning Strategies
Our article on improving human decision-making with intelligent cognitive tutors has been accepted for publication in PNAS.
Many bad decisions and their devastating consequences could be avoided if people used optimal decision strategies. Here,
we introduce a new approach to improving human decision-making. The basic idea is to give people feedback on \textit{how} they reach their decisions. We develop a method that leverages artificial intelligence to generate this feedback in such a way that people quickly discover the best possible decision strategies.
Our empirical findings suggest that this new approach leads to improvements in decision-making competence that transfer to more difficult decisions in more complex environments. In the long run, this line of work might lead to apps that teach people clever strategies for decision making, reasoning, goal-setting, planning, and goal achievement.
Falk Lieder
Yash Raj Jain
Gabriela Iwama
Frederic Becker
Rationality Enhancement
Award
28-01-2022
PNAS Article
PNAS article on Intelligent Cognitive Tutors
Falk Lieder
Yash Raj Jain
Frederic Becker
Rationality Enhancement
News
25-01-2022
"Improving Human Decision-Making by Discovering Efficient Strategies for Hierarchical Planning" is going to be published!
The article "Improving Human Decision-Making by Discovering Efficient Strategies for Hierarchical Planning" has been accepted in Computational Brain & Behavior.
Saksham Consul
Lovis Heindrich
Jugoslav Stojcheski
Falk Lieder
Rationality Enhancement
News
03-01-2022
New Methods Paper
Our methods paper "A Computational Process-Tracing Method for Measuring People’s Planning Strategies and How They Change Over Time" has just been accepted for publication in Behavior Research Methods.
Yash Raj Jain
Ruiqi He
Falk Lieder
Rationality Enhancement
News
23-12-2021
Article on Resouce-Rational Models of Planning Accepted by Nature Human Behaviour
The article "Rational Use of Cognitive Resources in Human Planning" has been accepted for publication in Nature Human Behaviour.
Falk Lieder
Rationality Enhancement
News
26-08-2021
"Resource-Rational Models of Human Goal Pursuit" is now published!
Great work Ben, Florian, Mateo, and Falk!
Benjamin Prystawski
Florian Mohnert
Mateo Tosic
Falk Lieder
Rationality Enhancement
News
01-07-2021
The Life Improvement Science 2021 inaugural conference concluded successfully on 13 June, 2021!
Life Improvement Science (LIS) is an emerging transdisciplinary research field that investigates how we can help people do more good in better ways (well-doing).
The ultimate goal of the conference was to promote the long-term well-doing of humanity. The conference featured invited talks on the most promising scientific approaches from motivation science, moral psychology, positive psychology, cognitive science, effective altruism, digital interventions, character education, social and personality psychology, coaching, wisdom scholarship, economics, sociology, and other relevant areas from some of the key researchers in these fields. We had more than 600 registered participants and we successfully gathered 100+ researchers to join the community after the conference and they will collaborate on the topic LIS in the future.
Rationality Enhancement
News
24-06-2021
ICCM accepts paper on measuring and modelling how people learn how to plan!
Great work Ruiqi, Yash, and Falk!
Ruiqi He
Yash Raj Jain
Falk Lieder
Rationality Enhancement
News
25-05-2021
Transfer of the season!
Julian starts his Ph.D. at the USCD!
Julian Skirzynski
Rationality Enhancement
News
18-03-2021
Nishad Singhi joined our lab!
Welcome, Nishad!
Nishad Singhi
Rationality Enhancement
News
16-03-2021
Congratulations to Gabriela Iwama and Falk Lieder on publishing!
"Toward a formal theory of proactivity" is now online!
Gabriela Iwama
Falk Lieder
Rationality Enhancement
News
08-03-2021
Our article on computational models of goal pursuit received positive reviews
"Resource-Rational Models of Human Goal Pursuit"
Benjamin Prystawski
Florian Mohnert
Mateo Tosic
Falk Lieder
Rationality Enhancement
News
25-02-2021
Call for Submissions for the Life Improvement Science Conference - June 2021
The deadline to submit is April 16, 2021!
The first Life Improvement Science conference will be held online between June 9 - June 13, 2021
Falk Lieder
Mike Prentice
Rationality Enhancement
News
18-02-2021
"Automatic Discovery of Interpretable Planning Strategies" is going to be published!
Great work Julian, Frederic, and Falk!
The Rationality Enhancement Group is proud to announce the acceptance of an article!
Julian Skirzynski
Frederic Becker
Falk Lieder
Rationality Enhancement
News
08-02-2021
Reena Pauly joins the Rationality Enhancement Group!
Welcome, Reena!
Expanding the Solve Education project team
Reena Pauly
Rationality Enhancement
News
04-01-2021
Ruiqi He joined our lab!
Starting off a new year with Ruiqi!
Welcome to the REG!
Ruiqi He
Rationality Enhancement
News
13-10-2020
Falk Lieder talks at Graz University of Technology about Life Improvement Science
Falk Lieder talks about his work on Life Improvement Science at the Computer Science Department of Graz University of Technology in Austria
Falk Lieder
Rationality Enhancement
News
02-10-2020
Gabriela Iwama is back
Gabriela supported the Rationality Enhancement Group before and we are happy to welcome her back!
Gabriela Iwama
Rationality Enhancement
News
01-10-2020
Amazing! Both tools won Micro Grants from ClearerThinking.org!
Congratulations to each team on making it to the final round of ClearerThinking's Micro-Grant competition!
Falk Lieder
Gabriela Iwama
Hernán González
Ella Eisemann
Victoria Amo
Rationality Enhancement
News
01-09-2020
Lovis Heindrich joined our lab!
Welcome, Lovis!
Reinforcement learning, machine learning, and using AI to make a positive impact!
Lovis Heindrich
Rationality Enhancement
News
19-07-2020
Mike Prentice joined our lab!
Welcome to the Rationality Enhancement Group!
Despite all the Covid-19 obstacles, Mike is finally officially joining the RE group!
Mike Prentice
Rationality Enhancement
News
01-07-2020
Maryam Elenguebawy joined our lab!
Welcome, Maryam!
Originally from Egypt, Maryam studies Cognitive Science at the University of Osnabrueck. She joined the Rationality Enhancement Group on July 1 as a student assistant. She is interested in Neuroscience and Human-Computer Interaction (usability experience).
Maryam Elenguebawy
Rationality Enhancement
News
18-05-2020
CogSci accepts conference paper submission!
Congratulations to Anirudha Kemtur, Yash Raj Jain, Aashay Mehta, Frederick Callaway, Saksham Consul, Jugoslav Stojcheski, and Falk Lieder!
Yash Raj Jain
Falk Lieder
Aashay Mehta
Anirudha Kemtur
Saksham Consul
Jugoslav Stojcheski
Rationality Enhancement
News
18-05-2020
Two abstracts accepted for ClearerThinking.org micro grants!
Congratulations to the Rationality Enhancement Group on two abstracts being accepted for the first round of submissions for the ClearerThinking.org micro grants!
Ella Eisemann
Falk Lieder
Hernán González
Rationality Enhancement
News
04-05-2020
Benjamin Prystawski joined our lab
Welcome, Ben!
The Rationaliy Enhancement Group is continuing to grow despite the Corona crisis situation
Benjamin Prystawski
Rationality Enhancement
News
22-04-2020
Pin-Zhen Chen joined our lab
Welcome, Pin-Zhen (aka Kelly)!
Pin-Zehn, also known to us as Kelly, is a Bachelor student at the University of Tübingen in her final semester. She is orinally from Taiwan and is currently working toward her degree in Computational Linguistics.
She joined the Rationality Enhancement Group on April 22 and is mainly supporting the group through web development and web applications for the various research projects as needed.
We are so happy to have her join our team
Pin-Zhen Chen
Rationality Enhancement
News
15-04-2020
Falk Lieder among winners of 2020 Glushko Dissertation Prize
Falk Lieder awarded Glushko Prize for his 2018 PhD thesis: “Beyond Bounded Rationality: Reverse-Engineering and Enhancing Human Intelligence”
Falk Lieder
Rationality Enhancement
Appointment
01-04-2020
Maria Wirzberger becomes Junior Professor at the University of Stuttgart
Rationality Enhancement
News
22-03-2020
Maria Wirzberger appointed Tenure-Track Assistant Professor at University of Stuttgart
Our former postdoctoral researcher Maria Wirzberger has just taken on her new position as Tenure Track Assistant Professor with a focus on teaching and learning with intelligent systems at the University of Stuttgart.
Maria Wirzberger
Rationality Enhancement
News
18-03-2020
Article about Resource-rational anaylsis in Behavioral and Brain Sciences
"Resource-rational analysis: Understanding human cognition as the optimal use of limited computational resources" now fully published!
Congratulations! Behavioral and Brain Science Journal has fully published our article "Resource-rational analysis: Understanding human cognition as the optimal use of limited computational resources"!
Falk Lieder
Rationality Enhancement
News
16-03-2020
Adrian Stock joined our lab
Welcome, Adrian!
Adrian is supporting the Rationality Enhancement Group as a student assistant. He will be working on the ACTrain-Project; which is a personalized companion for enhancing executive functions based on adaptive metacognitive feedback. Adrian will help develop the programming behind the scenes of the project.
Adrian Stock
Rationality Enhancement
News
12-03-2020
Submission to SIG 8 Meets SIG 16 Conference in Dresden has been accepted!
Congratulations Victoria Amo on your successful conference submission!
Victoria's submission touches on her research on the growth mindset approach as being key for maintaining motivation and overcoming setbacks.
Victoria Amo
Falk Lieder
Rationality Enhancement
News
05-03-2020
Lisa Eckerstorfer joined our lab
Welcome, Lisa!
Lisa is a postdoctoral researcher for the Rationality Enhancement Group.
Lisa Eckerstorfer
Rationality Enhancement
News
10-02-2020
Hernán González joined our lab
Welcome, Hernán!
Hernán is a researcher for the Rationality Enhancement Group. He is focused on how different kinds of goal-setting strategies can lead to a more fulfilled and productive life. Additionally he is interested in rational decision-making and generation and maintenance of motivated behavior.
Hernán González
Rationality Enhancement
News
10-02-2020
Sierra Kaiser joined our lab
Welcome, Sierra!
Sierra has joined the Rationality Enhancement Group to help support the general organization and management of the lab. She is supporting the group behind the scenes in order to keep the lab running smoothly. She has a B.A. in Linguistic Language Studies from UC San Diego. After several years of teaching English at the University of Reutlingen, and completing a course in Office Management, she has decided to support our team.
Sierra Kaiser
Rationality Enhancement
News
03-02-2020
Frederic Becker joined our lab!
Welcome, Frederic!
Frederic is a bachelor student of Cognitive Science at Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen. He's interested in the connection between natural and artificial cognition.
Frederic Becker
Rationality Enhancement
News
13-01-2020
Saksham Consul joined our lab
Welcome, Saksham!
Saksham is a final year bachelor student in Electronics and Instrumentation Engineering at BITS-Pilani, India. He is interested in the fields of Artificial General Intelligence and Cognitive Prostheses. He is currently supporting the Rationality Enhancement Group as a Bachelor's Student Intern while writing his bachelor thesis under the supervision of Dr. Falk Lieder.
Saksham Consul
Rationality Enhancement
News
08-01-2020
Lennart Scatturin joined our lab
Welcome, Lennart!
Lennart is supporting the Rationality Enhancement Group as a student assistant.
Lennart Scatturin
Rationality Enhancement
News
02-01-2020
Aashay Metha joined our lab
Welcome, Aashay!
Aashay is a working on his bachelor's degree in Computer Science at BITS-Pilani, India. He is currently supporting the Rationality Enhancement Group as a Bachelor's Student Intern while writing his bachelor thesis under the supervision of Dr. Falk Lieder. He is broadly interested in the fields of Artificial Intelligence and Decision Making.
Aashay Mehta
Rationality Enhancement
News
01-11-2019
Ella Eisemann joined our lab
Welcome, Ella!
Ella is a Bachelor's Student Intern for the Rationality Enhancement Group.
Ella Eisemann
