Perpetual Self-aware Cognitive Agents

Michael T. CoxBBNT Cambridge

9 March 2005 2

Self-Awareness

• What does it mean to be self-aware?

?

• What does it mean to be aware?– Not just to perceive

the environment– Instead to interpret the

environment

• Understand the environment well enough to generate goals

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Cognitive Integration, not Technology Integration

• Spheres of Intelligence– Physical domain– Mental domain– Social domain

PhysicalWorld

MentalWorld

SocialWorld

Perpetual Cognitive Agent

• Reasoning Integration– Problem-solving– Interpretation– Learning

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Wumpus World Description

• Performance measure– gold +1000, death -1000

– -1 per step, -10 for using the arrow

• Environment– Squares adjacent to Wumpus are smelly

– Squares adjacent to pit are breezy

– Glitter iff gold is in the same square

– Shooting kills Wumpus if you are facing it

– Shooting uses up the only arrow

– Grabbing picks up gold if in same square

– Releasing drops the gold in same square

• Actuators: Left turn, Right turn, Forward, Grab, Release, Shoot• Sensors: Stench, Breeze, Glitter, Bump, Scream

––––––

–

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The Corridor Cave

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(Planning) (Interpretation)

S

S’

Plan

Goal

Translate

Wumpus Environment

Simulator

Prodigy/Agent Meta-AQUA

effector subsystem perceptual subsystem

INTRO Architecture

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Meta-AQUA

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PRODIGY

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Prodigy/Agent

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Goal Choices

• How did INTRO know to solve an achievement goal rather than a learning goal?Answer: Hard coded!

• Speculation– Calculate amount of change required for

learning goal – Confidence in knowledge structures– Know when an achievement goal is easy

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Self-Awareness

• What does it mean to be self-aware?– Not just to perceive

one’s self in the environment

– Instead self-interpretation

• Understand the self well enough to generate learning goals

• What does it mean to be aware?– Not just to perceive

the environment– Instead to interpret the

environment

• Understand the environment well enough to generate goals

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But …

• Relationship between metacognition and self-awareness?

• PRODIGY has no “I”

• Meta-AQUA does, but does not use it

• Anderson’s hypothesis

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Questions Remaining

• How to integrate bottom-up with top-down processing?

• How is control affected by monitoring computationally?

• How can a system know what it knows?• What does it really mean for a system to be self-

aware?• How can lessons from cognitive psychology

inform computational approaches? Vice versa?