IDA: A Cognitive Agent Architecture Lisa Soros

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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 s 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

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

IDA: A Cognitive Agent Architecture

Perception Consists mostly of input from s Uses only surface-level NLP (no parsing) Uses a Copycat-like architecture (Hofstadter & Mitchell) with perceptual codelets triggered by both content and internal knowledge This allows IDA to recognize, categorize, and understand

IDA: A Cognitive Agent Architecture ”A secretary sending out an 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 messages well enough to do all the things she needs to with them.” - Franklin

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

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

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'

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

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

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