1. Agents in the Society of Mind EEL 6938 William Walters

2. The Society of the Mind Marvin Minsky –M.I.T. Professor –A.I., cognitive psychology, mathematics –Common sense reasoning Book –Concept of how the mind works –Organization of book

3. Agents and Agencies Mind is made up of many small processes, each small process is an agent Agents have no intelligence Agents can only do simple task An agency is many agents put together Agencies appear to have intelligence

4. Cup of tea Agents –Grasping –Balancing –Thirst –Moving Millions of things going on and no one thinks about them

5. Common Sense Making machines do common sense tasks are the most difficult Children learn common sense early –Don’t use same block –What if tower sways Is tower too tall Is foundation insecure Was last block placed too roughly

6. Blocks Why Blocks 1960’s built builder

7. Conflict Conflicts go to higher agents and weaken them

8. Reward Snarc, maze and predator Couldn’t solve complicated problems Only learn last steps before reward Reinforcement learning not for complicated problems Beavers and dams

9. Memory K-Lines Bicycle example

10. Knowledge-Tree Jack is flying his kite

11. Emotion Can intelligent machines have emotion? Can machines be intelligent without emotions? Thoughts and emotions intertwined –Anger –Thirst –Hunger –Fear

12. Language Agency Agents –Polynemes – long-term memories – Isonomes – short-term memories

13. Ambiguity I wrote a note to my sister. –Comment –Banknote –Musical Sound The astronomer married the star. John shot two bucks.

14. Old Agents and New Agents Old agents know less than new ones Old agents are the foundation the new Losing old agents

15. Confusion of Agents

16. References Minsky, Marvin. The Society of the Mind, Simon and Schuster, New York 1985. http://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/