January 27, 2009 at 3:16 pm (Publications)
The final version of this paper is now available from the Journal of Artificial Intelligence. Since I prefer to read the paper with the (author year) style of referencing, I have made a differently formatted version of the paper available here.
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Enactive Artificial Intelligence: Investigating the systemic organization of life and mind
Tom Froese and Tom Ziemke
The embodied and situated approach to artificial intelligence (AI) has matured and become a viable alternative to traditional computationalist approaches with respect to the practical goal of building artificial agents, which can behave in a robust and flexible manner under changing real-world conditions. Nevertheless, some concerns have recently been raised with regard to the sufficiency of current embodied AI for advancing our scientific understanding of intentional agency. While from an engineering or computer science perspective this limitation might not be relevant, it is of course highly relevant for AI researchers striving to build accurate models of natural cognition. We argue that the biological foundations of enactive cognitive science can provide the conceptual tools that are needed to diagnose more clearly the shortcomings of current embodied AI. In particular, taking an enactive perspective points to the need for AI to take seriously the organismic roots of autonomous agency and sense-making. We identify two necessary systemic requirements, namely constitutive autonomy and adaptivity, which lead us to introduce two design principles of enactive AI. It is argued that the development of such enactive AI poses a significant challenge to current methodologies. However, it also provides a promising way of eventually overcoming the current limitations of embodied AI, especially in terms of providing fuller models of natural embodied cognition. Finally, some practical implications and examples of the two design principles of enactive AI are also discussed.
Download paper.
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January 19, 2009 at 12:49 pm (Presentations)
This will be a joint seminar between the E-Intentionality seminar series and the Life and Mind seminar series.
Life and Mind ‘As-It-Could-Be’: Technological Methodologies for a Science of Subjectivity
Tom Froese
4:30 p.m. Thursday, 22 January – Pevensey I 1A1
In this seminar I want to reflect on the role of recent technological developments, in particular the creation of artificial intelligence and sensory augmentation interfaces, in relation to the goal of gaining a better understanding of life and mind. I will argue that both forms of technology are indispensable if we want to obtain insights into the essential aspects of the phenomenon of subjectivity in terms of both its living (third-person) and lived (first-person) features.
Generally speaking, in order to determine the essential aspects of a particular phenomenon it is necessary to know its ranges of variability and conditions of break-down, namely those situations when it ceases to be the type of phenomenon it originally was and becomes something else. However, since the appropriate kind of variation is often hard to find in terms of factual cases, technology might be of help here. It has already been recognized, for example, that the field of artificial life can make a substantial contribution by mapping out the domain of life as-it-could-be (Langton).
But what about the first-person aspects of subjectivity? Here I will try to show that there are some essential similarities between the methods of artificial modelling and those that have been developed by the phenomenological tradition of first-person study. Moreover, I will argue that a similar technological supplementation of this first-person research might be possible, for example through the use of sensory augmentation interfaces. The starting point for this endeavour thus could be a systematic investigation of perception as-it-could-be.
All welcome!
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