# Presentation: 069864

## Implications                                       of the IDA Architecture                    for Cognitive Systems

- Stan Franklin                                                         and the                                                      ‘Conscious’ Software Research Group

## IDA: an Intelligent Distribution Agent

**Detailer**

**Telephone**

- Dialogue with sailors
- Read personnel data
- Check job requisition lists
- Enforce Navy policies
- Choose jobs to offer members
- Negotiate with them about jobs

## IDA: a ‘conscious’ software agent

**IDA**

**Notes:**
Define AA

Promise Global Workspace Theory

Running IDA, detailer’s comments

Conceptual Model
	includes modules fully designed 
	but not yet implemented

Conceptual Model subject of this talk

## Global Workspace Theory

- A psychological theory of consciousness
- The nervous system is a distributed parallel system                 with many different specialized processors
- Global workspace contains a coalition of processors
- Broadcasts globally to all other processors
- Recruit other processors needed for any degree                            of novel or problematic situation
- Explains limited capacity and seriality

**Notes:**
Global Workspace Theory
For a current, quite readable account of the theory see Bernard J. Baars,                                          In the Theater of Consciousness, Oxford University Press, 1997. For a much more scholarly approach that specifies the empirical evidence on which the theory is based, see Bernard J. Baars, A Cognitive Theory of Consciousness, Cambridge University Press, 1988

The single most important contribution of global workspace theory is the idea of broadcasting the contents of consciousness in order to recruit relevant processors to help deal with whatever is new or problematic in the current situation. Anything else can be dealt with subconsciously.

Of course capacity must be limited. Large messages cannot be easily understood.

The same argument shows that consciousness must be serial. Messages arriving in parallel are not likely to be understood.

## Contexts at work

## Why a ‘Conscious’ Agent?

- Flesh out the theory                                with detailed architecture and mechanisms
- Hypotheses for cognitive scientists            and neuroscientists
- Produce flexible, adaptive, human-like software** **
- Want smart agents?
-     Model them after humans.

## Modules and Mechanisms

- Perception—Copycat Architecture—Hofstadter
- Action Selection—Behavior Net—Maes
- Episodic Memory—Sparse Distributed Memory—Kanerva
- Emotions—Pandemonium Theory—Jackson
- Metacognition—Fuzzy Classifier Systems—Holland
- Learning—Copycat Architecture, Reinforcement
- Constraint Satisfaction—Linear Functional
- Language Generation—Pandemonium Theory
- Deliberation—Pandemonium Theory
- ‘Consciousness’ —Pandemonium Theory

**Notes:**
Modules and Mechanisms

IDA’s various modules are, for the most part, implemented with mechanisms taken from the “new AI.” 

Readable introductions to almost all of them can be found in Stan Franklin’s Artificial Minds (MIT Press, 1995). 

Different modules employ quite diverse mechanisms suited to their functions. 

All have required considerable modifications and extensions in order to play a useful role in the IDA architecture.

## IDA’s Architecture

- ‘Consciousness’

- Perception

- Metacognition

- Working
- Memory

- Episodic
- Memory

- Behavior Net

- Emotions

- Database
- Perception

- Constraint
- Satisfaction

- Deliberation

- Negotiation

- Problem
- Solving

- Expectation
- &
- Automization

**Notes:**
Blue= part of the running IDA
Green=  fully designed but not yet implemented
Red = mechanism not yet known in detail

## Processing in IDA

- A continuing iteration        of a cognitive cycle       of activities involving:

- Perception
- Working memory
- Transient episodic memory
- Declarative memory
- ‘Consciousness’
- Action selection
- Motor activity

## Slide 10

## Cognitive Cycle Processing

- Hypothesis—  Like IDA’s, human cognitive processing is                  		  via a continuing sequence of Cognitive Cycles
- Duration—	  Each cognitive cycle takes roughly 200 ms                    	              with steps 1 through 5 occupying about 80 ms
- Cascading—    Several cycles may have parts running 		              		  simultaneously in parallel
- Seriality—	 Consciousness maintains serial order                                             	              and the illusion of continuity
- Start—	 Cycle may start with action selection 				 instead of perception

## Deliberation

- Faced with a goal or problem
- Imagine possible plans or solutions
- Scenarios
- Routes
- Internal virtual reality—Dawkins
- Evaluate them
- Using reason
- Using emotions
- Choose among them

## Ideomotor Theory

- William James (circa 1890) ----- Bernard Baars (1988)
- Voluntary vs non-voluntary action
- Theory of voluntary action
- Proposers—propose a course of action
- Objectors—raise objections to such a 			     course of action
- Supporters—lend support to such a course 		      of action
- Auctioneer—wields the gavel

## Ideomotor Theory in Action

- Idea pops to mind (proposer)—no objection (objector)—do it
- Objection (objector)—don’t do it
- Objection then support (supporter)—do it
- Different proposal—no objection—do it
- Different proposal—original proposal—no objection—do it
- Last unopposed proposal is acted upon

## Varieties of Action Selection

- Volition—Conscious Goal Selection
- Consciously mediated actions
- Automatized actions

## Varieties of Learning

- Perceptual Learning
- of individual, classes, relations
- Episodic Learning (transient and long-term)
- Of what, when and where
- Procedural Learning
- Which of similar skills get reinforced
- Learning is of conscious content
- Plus implicit learning of rules, etc.
- Inverse sigmoidal decay with saturation

## Varieties of Self

## Cognitive Systems

- Utilizes psychologically plausible computational representations
- of human cognitive processes
- as a basis for system designs
- that seek to engage the underlying mechanisms of human cognition
- augment the cognitive capacities of human users

## IDA Model of Cognition

- Offers a comprehensive, global view of cognition
- Multi-mechanism Unified Theory of Cognition
- Integrates a number of psychological theories
- Baars’ Global Workspace Theory
- Barsalou’s Perceptual Symbol Systems
- Baddeley’s Episodic Buffer
- Ericsson and Kintsch’s Long-Term Working Memory
- Conway’s Transient Episodic Memory

## IDA as a Cognitive System

- Psychologically plausible                     computational representations? Yes
- Utilizes underlying mechanisms                           of human cognition? Yes
- Augment the cognitive capacities                         of human users? Does IDA have users?
- IDA suggests that cognitive systems               can be comprehensive, global, integrated

## Web and Email Addresses

- Stan Franklin
- franklin@memphis.edu
- www.cs.memphis.edu/~franklin
- ‘Conscious’ Software Research Group
- www.cs.memphis.edu/~csrg

## Levels of abstraction

- High level
- behaviors
- message type nodes
- emotions
- metacognitive actions
- etc.
- Low level
- codelets

## Codelets

- Small pieces of code each performing                              a simple, specialized task
- Many acts as demons, watching for a chance to act
- Most subserve some high level entity, e.g.
- behavior
- slipnet node
- metacognitive action
- Some codelets work on their own, e.g.
- watching for incoming mail
- checking for time and place conflicts
- Codelets do almost all the work
- IDA is a multi-agent system

## Perception via a Slipnet

**Notes:**
IDA’s slipnet contain the knowledge needed for understanding incoming messages. Here’s a tiny portion of it. 

Codelets might identify one of the many form of Norfolk, activate the Norfolk node which spreads activity to the Location node, which in turn helps activate the messages types that are expected to contain a location.

Perceptual processing in IDA is unconscious.

In humans it can be unconscious or conscious.

Conscious perceptual processing could be added to IDA

## Coalitions and Consciousness

- Coalition manager
- Spotlight manager
- Broadcast mechanism

## A Behavior Stream

- Find and move
- a template

- Compose an
- acknowledgment

- Find an email
- address

- From the
- Sidelines

- Activation from drive

- Activation from the environment, external or internal

- Send an
- acknowledgement

**Notes:**
Behavior Net

IDA selects her next behavior (goal context in global workspace theory) by mean of an expanded version of Maes’ behavior net.

Activation is spread in two directions, one originating with an explicitly represented drive, and the other from the environment.

A behavior is chosen to be executed if all it preconditions are satisfied, if its activation is above threshold, and if it’s activation is the highest such.

Though affecting conscious processing,, the behavior net operates unconsciously as GW theory says goal contexts, hierarchies, etc. should

## ‘Consciousness’ in Action

**‘****Consciousness’ in Action**

**Focus**

**Behavior net**

**   ****Side lines**

**Playing field**

**Stands**