What makes us human?  What gives us our powers of thought, of language, of planning, of perception?  The intricacies of the human brain, the most complex object known to science, are yielding to study from multiple disciplines of computation, neuroscience, linguistics, philosophy, mathematics, and psychology. 

Former Dartmouth mathematician John McCarthy said: “the mechanisms underlying thought can be so precisely defined that a machine can be made to simulate them.” And Caltech physicist Richard Feynman put it succinctly: “What I cannot create, I do not understand.” Computational science has as its goal the study of the hidden rules underlying complex phenomena; to understand an object of study computationally is to understand it so well that we can build it.

The Human Algorithm conference highlighted current investigations of the complex mechanisms underlying our humanity.  It focused on state-of-the-art theories and controversies of our extant computational understanding of human cognition, human capabilities, and human limitations. The speakers included some of the most prominent scientists in their respective fields, each with expertise on the rules that govern our brains and behavior, the limitations of our cognitive abilities, their evolutionary origins, and the current state of the art in how we can come to understand brains and minds sufficiently well to build them. 

The conference is at the intersection between the sciences and the humanities, bringing these disparate authorities together to examine cutting edge knowledge of how humans think, how we err, how we got this way, and where our species may be headed.