6th Youth in High-Dimensions: Recent Progress in Machine Learning, High-Dimensional Statistics and Inference & How creative is Generative AI? Perspectives from Science and Philosophy

Administration

Description

An ICTP Hybrid Meeting

How creative is generative AI: 3 - 5 July 2025

Youth in high dimensions: 7 - 9 July 2025

The ICTP-IBM Brahmagupta AI Prize for Young Scientists: 10 July 2025 For more information on the ceremony and winner, please visit: https://indico.ictp.it/event/11057/

In the first part of this activity, we will discuss to what extent generative artificial intelligence systems that create text or images like ChatGPT or Dall-E are "creative’. To this end, we will bring together a diverse group of experts from the sciences and humanities. Here is the website set up for the AI & Creativity event? http://aicreativity25.github.io/

Speakers

Alice Barale, Università di Milano, Italy
Larissa Berger, Uni Siegen, Germany
Sergio Canazza, Centro di Sonologia Computazionale, Italy
Alexandre Darmon, Art in Research, France

Alessandro De Cesaris, Università di Torino, Italy
Alessandro Fiordelmondo, Università di Padova, Italy

Alexandra Gilliams, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, France
Mason Kamb, Stanford, USA

Roberto Trotta, SISSA, Italy

Ardavan Vossoughi, Università di Padova, Italy

The second part of this activity will see the sixth edition of “Youth in high dimensions”, where we give young researchers from academia and industry the opportunity to gather and present recent results on high-dimensional statistical problems, in areas ranging from machine learning and inference to neuroscience or statistical physics. Typical problems in high-dimensions include estimating noisy signals, analysing (deep) neural-networks, detecting communities in large networks, or modelling disordered spin systems.

This conference aims at reinforcing the links among the interdisciplinary community of scientists working on machine learning, and to connect them with philosophers, artists and sociologists to reflect about the impact and role of this technology, and to bring forward the latest development happening in the high-dimensional world.

Youth is a satellite meeting of Statphys2025 https://statphys29.org/

Topics

High-dimensional statistics

Statistical physics

Machine learning

Computational neuroscience

Complex systems

Machine learning for science

Statistical inference

Speakers
Lorenzo Bardone, SISSA, Italy

Freya Behrens, EPFL, Switzerland

Simone Bombari, ISTA, Austria

Elizabeth Collins-Woodfin, University of Oregon, USA

Alex Damian, Princeton, USA

Hadi Daneshmand, MIT, USA

Daniil Dmitriev, ETH Zurich, Switzerland

Margalit Glasgow, Stanford, USA

Erin Grant, Gatsby, UK

Brice Huang, MIT, USA

Bingbin Liu, CMU, USA

Vidya Muthukumar, Georgia Tech, USA

Mauro Pastore, ICTP, Italy

Reese Pathak, UC Berkeley, USA

Stefano Sarao Mannelli, Chalmers, Sweden

Abishek Shetty, MIT, USA

Jingfeng Wu, Berkeley, USA

The following activity to be held from 10 to 18 July 2025 may also be of interest for you: Advanced School on Foundation Models for Scientific Discovery

Research abstracts: Applicants are encouraged to submit an abstract for a poster presentation at the “Youth in high dimensions” activity. During the application, please make sure to use our templates to format your abstract. Templates are available below for download.

Contributed talk: The possibility of giving a contributed talk will be offered to a selection of people who will present a poster.

Participation: If you don't need any financial support and/or visa, three activities can be followed separately.

Grants: A limited number of grants are available to support the attendance of selected participants, with priority given to participants from developing countries. There is no registration fee.

Material

Abstract Templates BOOKLET Post.Session CT Gen AI Booklet CT Youth Booklet Poster

6th Youth in High-Dimensions: Recent Progress in Machine Learning, High-Dimensional Statistics and Inference & How creative is Generative AI? Perspectives from Science and Philosophy | (smr 4084)

Go to day

Thursday, 3 July 2025

08:30 - 09:00 Registration & administrative formalities
09:00 - 11:00
```
Chair: to be announced
```
- 09:00 Opening remarks 45'
  
  Speaker: Sebastian Goldt (SISSA), Elisa Gremmo (Unipd)
- 09:45 An Example from the Artists? A Philosophical Journey through Creative Experiments with AI 45'
  
  Speaker: Alice Barale (Università di Milano)
- 10:30 Coffee break 30'
11:00 - 14:00
```
Chair: to be announced
```
- 11:00 TBA 45'
  
  Speaker: Francesco Cagnetta (SISSA)
- 11:45 Artificial Optics: AI Art as Phantasmagoric Spectacle 45'
  
  Speaker: Alexandra Gilliams (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne)
- 12:30 Lunch 1h30'

14:00 - 16:30 Contributed talks

Chair: Lorenzo Carta (Università di Trieste)

14:00 Reimagining Authorship and Ownership of AI-Generated Images under EU Law 20'

Speaker:	Giovanni Chieco (Università di Trieste)
Material:	Abstract

14:20 Color Distributions in Nature: A Data-Driven Exploration of Color Harmony and Aesthetic Preferences 20'

Speaker:	Ortensia Forni (EconophysiX - Ecole Polytechnique)
Material:	Abstract

14:40 Creativity as a Human Virtue 20'

Speaker:	Patrick Hayes (University of Glasgow)
Material:	Abstract

16:00 Break 30'

16:30 - 17:30 Concert
- 16:30 COMPOSIZIONE AI & DISKLAVIER 1h0'
  
  Speaker: Ardavan Vossoughi (Università di Padova)

Friday, 4 July 2025

09:00 - 11:00
```
Chair: to be announced
```
- 09:00 TBA 45'
  
  Speaker: Alessandro De Cesaris (Università di Torino)
- 09:45 TBA 45'
  
  Speaker: Roberto Trotta (SISSA)
- 10:30 Coffee break 30'

11:00 - 14:00 Contributed talks

Chair: to be announced

11:00 Generative AI: collaborator or tool? The experience of interaction in the process of artistic creation 20'

Speaker:	Puscasu Iulia-Dana (Babes-Bolyai University)
Material:	Abstract

11:20 Synthesizing Naturalistic Visual Textures Using Deep Neural Samplers 20'

Speaker:	Ludovica De Paolis (SISSA)
Material:	Abstract

11:40 AI and the problem of creative spontaneity 20'

Speaker:	Dorde Lazarevic (University of Niš)
Material:	Abstract

12:00 Process Versus Output: Various Illusions of Originality in Humans and AI 20'

Speaker:	Baldwin Daniel (University of Liverpool)
Material:	Abstract

12:30 Lunch 1h30'

14:00 - 18:30 Contributed talks

Chair: Pierluigi Masai (Università di Trieste)

14:00 Can Machines Philosophize? 20'

Speaker:	Michele Pizzochero (University of Bath)
Material:	Abstract

14:20 Metaphorical Masks: Capturing and Concealing LLM Creativity in Art 20'

Speaker:	Mácha Jakub (Masaryk University)
Material:	Abstract

14:40 Can GenAI be creative? AI-Human Co-Creativity:Enriching the Concept of Creativity in Light of Emerging GenAITowards Collective Co-Creativity of AI and Humans 20'

Speaker:	Kunicki Martha (Princeton University)
Material:	Abstract

16:00 Coffee break 30'
16:30 Poster session 2h0'

Material: LINK to BOOKLET

Saturday, 5 July 2025

09:30 - 11:45
```
Chair: to be announced
```
- 09:45 Could AI be a genius? - Kant's theory of art, artistic creativity and AI 45'
  
  Speaker: Larissa Berger (Uni Siegen)
- 10:30 Coffee break 30'
- 11:00 An Analytic Theory of Creativity in Convolutional Diffusion Models 45'
  
  Speaker: Mason Kamb (Stanford)

11:45 - 12:25 Contributed talks

Chair: to be announced

11:45 From the Human/Machine Dichotomy to Distributed Creativity - The Case of AI Integration in Filmmaking 20'

Speaker:	Pierluigi Masai (Università di Trieste)
Material:	Abstract

12:05 The Myth of the Creativity Dial: Temperature in LLMs 20'

Speaker:	Federico Milanesio (Università di Torino)
Material:	Abstract

Monday, 7 July 2025
- 08:30 - 09:00 Registration & administrative formalities
- 09:00 - 11:00
```
Chair: Serafina Di Gioia (ICTP)
```
  - 09:00 Opening remarks 5'
    
    Speaker: Jean Barbier (ICTP)
  - 09:05 TBA 45'
    
    Speaker: Alex Damian (Princeton)
  - 09:50 Propogation of Chaos in 2-Layer NNs 45'
    
    Speaker: Margalit Glasgow (Stanford)
  - 10:35 Coffee break 25'
- 11:00 - 14:00
```
Chair: Marco Mondelli (ISTA)
```
  - 11:00 Weak Poincaré inequalities, simulated annealing, and sampling from spherical spin glasses 45'
    
    Speaker: Brice Huang (MIT)
  - 11:45 The dynamics of bias in SGD training 45'
    
    Speaker: Stefano Sarao Manelli (Chalmers)
  - 12:30 Lunch 1h30'
- 14:00 - 19:15
```
Chair: Jean Barbier (ICTP)
```
  - 14:00 Statistical mechanics of extensive-width shallow neural networks near interpolation 45'
    
    Speaker: Mauro Pastore (ICTP)
  - 14:45 Revisiting empirical risk minimization: new risk characterizations and suboptimality results 45'
    
    Speaker: Reese Pathak (UC Berkeley)
  - 15:30 TBA 45'
```
Remote talk
```
    Speaker: Bingbin Liu (CMU)
  - 16:15 Hike + Aperitivo 3h0'

Tuesday, 8 July 2025

09:00 - 11:00
```
Chair: Jean Barbier (ICTP)
```
- 09:00 High-dimensional dynamics of SGD for GLMs and Gaussian mixture models 45'
  
  Speaker: Elizabeth Collins-Woodfin (University of Oregon)
- 09:45 The Lovasz number of random circulant graphs 45'
  
  Speaker: Daniil Dmitriev (ETH Zurich)
- 10:30 Coffee break 30'

11:00 - 14:00 Contributed talks

Chair: Serafina Di Gioia (ICTP)

11:00 Memorization and Generalization in Generative Diffusion 15'

Speaker:	Raphaël Urfin (École Normale Supérieure PSL)
Material:	Abstract

11:20 An Analytic Theory of Creativity in Convolutional Diffusion Models 15'

Speaker:	Mason Kamb (Stanford)
Material:	Abstract

11:40 The Rich and the Simple: On the Implicit Bias of Adam and SGD 15'

Speaker:	Bhavya Vasudeva (University of Southern California)
Material:	Abstract

12:00 Weak-to-Strong Generalization Even in Random Feature Networks, Provably 15'

Speaker:	Marko Medvedev (University of Chicago)
Material:	Abstract

12:30 Lunch 1h30'

14:00 - 19:00 Contributed talks
```
Chair: Marco Mondelli (ISTA)
```
- 14:00 Learning beyond the Gaussian approximation: Algorithmic Hardness and Neural Network Dynamics 45'
  
  Speaker: Lorenzo Bardone (SISSA)
- 14:45 A statistical approach to implicit regularization 45'
```
Remote talk
```
  Speaker: Jingfeng Wu (Berkeley)
- 15:30 TBA 45'
  
  Speaker: Vidya Muthukumar (Georgea Tech)
- 16:15 Coffee break 30'
- 16:45 Poster session 2h0'
  
  Material: LINK to BOOKLET

Wednesday, 9 July 2025

09:00 - 11:00
```
Chair: Marco Mondelli (ISTA)
```
- 09:00 TBA 45'
  
  Speaker: Freya Behrens (EPFL)
- 09:45 TBA 45'
  
  Speaker: Erin Grant (Gatsby)
- 10:30 Coffee break 30'

11:00 - 14:00 Contributed talks

Chair: Jean Barbier (ICTP)

11:00 Local minima of the empirical risk in high-dimensions: general theorems and convex examples 15'

Speaker:	Basil Saeed (Stanford)
Material:	Abstract

11:15 Spectral Estimators for Multi-Index Models: Precise Asymptotics and Optimal Weak Recovery 15'

Speaker:	Filip Kovacevic (ISTA)
Material:	Abstract

11:30 Training Dynamics of In-Context Learning in Linear Attention 15'

Speaker:	Yedi Zhang (University College London)
Material:	Abstract

11:45 What's in a caption? Finding semantics with the information imbalance 15'

Speaker:	Andrea Mascaretti (SISSA)
Material:	Abstract

12:00 Dissecting the Interplay of Attention Paths in a Statistical Mechanics Theory of Transformers 15'

Speaker:	Lorenzo Tiberi (Harvard University)
Material:	Abstract

12:30 Lunch 1h30'

14:00 - 16:45 Contributed talks
```
Chair: Serafina Di Gioia (ICTP)
```
- 14:00 Privacy for Free in the Overparameterized Regime 45'
  
  Speaker: Simone Bombari (ISTA)
- 14:45 TBA 45'
```
Remote talk
```
  Speaker: Hadi Daneshmand (MIT)
- 15:30 TBA 45'
  
  Speaker: Abhishek Shetty (MIT)
- 16:15 Break 30'