Perpetual Self-aware Cognitive Agents Michael T. Cox BBNT Cambridge

9 March 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

9 March Cognitive Integration, not Technology Integration Spheres of Intelligence –Physical domain –Mental domain –Social domain Perpetual Cognitive Agent Reasoning Integration –Problem-solving –Interpretation –Learning

9 March Wumpus World Description Performance measure –gold +1000, death –-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

9 March The Corridor Cave

9 March ( Planning ) ( Interpretation ) S S’ Plan Goal Translate Wumpus Environment Simulator Prodigy/Agent Meta-AQUA effector subsystemperceptual subsystem INTRO Architecture

9 March Meta-AQUA

9 March PRODIGY

9 March Prodigy/Agent

9 March

9 March 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

9 March 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

9 March But … Relationship between metacognition and self-awareness? PRODIGY has no “I” Meta-AQUA does, but does not use it Anderson’s hypothesis

9 March 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?