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IDA: A Cognitive Agent Architecture Lisa Soros

IDA: A Cognitive Agent Architecture Lisa Soros. Outline. Machine Consciousness Global Workspace Theory IDA: A Cognitive Agent Architecture. Machine Consciousness. Machine Consciousness.

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IDA: A Cognitive Agent Architecture Lisa Soros

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  1. IDA: A Cognitive Agent Architecture Lisa Soros

  2. Outline • Machine Consciousness • Global Workspace Theory • IDA: A Cognitive Agent Architecture

  3. Machine Consciousness

  4. Machine Consciousness • May 2001: Swartz Foundation sponsors a workshop at the Banbury Center in Long Island called 'Can A Machine Be Conscious?' • Attended by 20 psychologists, computer scientists, philosophers, physicists, neuroscientists, engineers, and indutrialists. • After the workshop, all but one attendee agreed that a machine could be conscious.

  5. Machine Consciousness • Assuming a machine could be conscious, how could we make it so? • First, we need a model of consciousness in general.

  6. Machine Consciousness • 3 major theories of consciousness: • 1. Dennett's Multiple Drafts Theory • 2. Shanon's Theory • 3. Baar's Global Workspace Theory • While each model has its idiosyncrasies, all assume that consciousness is not unitary in nature.

  7. Global Workspace Theory

  8. Global Workspace Theory • Theorized by Bernard Baars, a former Senior Fellow in Theoretical Neurobiology at The Neurosciences Institute (La Jolla, CA) in 1988 • Emerged from the cognitive architecture tradition pioneered by Alan Newell and Herbert Simon (who won the Turing Award in 1975 for their contributions to AI and the psychology of human cognition) • Newell et al showed the utility of a global workspace in managing complex knowledge sources

  9. Global Workspace Theory • According to GWT, • The function of consciousness is to broadcast information to separate functional modules throughout the brain • The global workspace is a central processor which contains the contents of consciousness • The global workspace functions as a sort of cognitive blackboard

  10. Global Workspace Theory • Baars explains his theory using the metaphor of a theatre of consciousness: • Working memory provides the ”stage” of consciousness • Executive guidance directs the ”spotlight” of attention on the stage • The rest of the theater (small, special purpose, independent processes) is dark and unconscious

  11. IDA: A Cognitive Agent Architecture

  12. IDA: A Cognitive Agent Architecture • Developed by Stan Franklin and the 'Conscious' Software Research Group at the University of Memphis • Franklin's work on 'conscious' software agents has produced ~60 academic publications • After receiving his Ph.D. from UCLA, he has been on the faculty at UF, the Indian Institute of Technology at Kanpur, Carnegie Mellon, and the University of Memphis

  13. IDA: A Cognitive Agent Architecture • IDA: Intelligent Distribution Agent • Designed to serve as a detailer for the U.S. Navy • Communicates with sailors via natural language e-mails to negotiate new assignments after their tours of duty • Must also adhere to ~90 Navy policies, fulfill job requirements, keep moving costs down, and respond to the wishes of the sailors

  14. IDA: A Cognitive Agent Architecture

  15. IDA: A Cognitive Agent Architecture • Codelet – a special purpose, relatvely independent mini-agent typically implemented as a small piece of code running as a separate thread (Hofstadter) • Perceptual codelets, attention codelets, information codelets, behavior codelets, language generation codelets... • Codelets in IDA correspond with processors in GWT

  16. IDA: A Cognitive Agent Architecture

  17. IDA: A Cognitive Agent Architecture • Perception • Consists mostly of input from e-mails • Uses only surface-level NLP (no parsing) • Uses a Copycat-like architecture (Hofstadter & Mitchell) with perceptual codelets triggered by both e-mail content and internal knowledge • This allows IDA to recognize, categorize, and understand

  18. IDA: A Cognitive Agent Architecture ”A secretary sending out an email announcement of an upcoming seminar on Compact Operators on Banach Spaces can be said to have understood the organizer’s request that she do so even though she has no idea of what a Banach pace is much less what compact operators on them are. In most cases it would likely require person years of diligent effort to impart such knowledge. Nonetheless, the secretary understands the request at a level sufficient for her to get out the announcement. In the same way IDA understands incoming email messages well enough to do all the things she needs to with them.” - Franklin

  19. IDA: A Cognitive Agent Architecture • Workspace • Corresponds to the Working Memory (or STM) in humans • Consists of registers set aside for particular categories of information • Perceptual & internal codelets write to the workspace, while many other codelets are watching the workspace in case they need to react to it • Interfaces with LTM; some, but not all, workspace contents are written to associative memory

  20. IDA: A Cognitive Agent Architecture • Associative Memory • SDM – Sparse Distributed Memory, a content-addressable memory • Writing to the workspace cues activation and retrieval in the associative memory

  21. IDA: A Cognitive Agent Architecture

  22. IDA: A Cognitive Agent Architecture • 'Consciousness' mechanism • A coalition manager, a broadcast manager, a spotlight controller, and attention codelets (which bring appropriate contents to 'consciousness') • Attention codelets watch out for items that might require 'conscious' attention • When attention-worthy items are found, the information codelets that describe the item are gathered into a coalition to handle the situation • The coalition then competes for the spotlight of 'consciousness'

  23. IDA: A Cognitive Agent Architecture • Example: • An attention codelet recognizes the please-find-job message type • It gathers information codelets carrying the sailor's name and SSN in addition to the message type • The attention and information codelets form a coalition and compete for 'consciousness' • If successful, the coalition's contents are broadcast to the rest of the system

  24. IDA: A Cognitive Agent Architecture • Behavior Selection (Decision Making) • Behavior net: Several drives acting in parallel, which vary in urgency with time and the environment • Behaviors depend on many behavior codelets • Behaviors are like production rules, with preconditions, additions, and deletions • In the behavior net, behaviors spread activations to other behaviors

  25. IDA: A Cognitive Agent Architecture • Other modules: • Emotion • Deliberation • Constraint Satisfaction • Voluntary Action • Negotiation • Learning • Metacognition

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