I, Robot

I, Robot

Pat Hayes, IHMC, U. West Florida. CAP-2000

I, Robot

or
What would it take to make a
robot with a self?

I, Robot

or
What would it take to make a
robot with a sense of itself?

Philosophical debate about consciousness
• Maybe THIS is how consciousness works (yaddah, yaddah)….
• Pschaw! I can imagine something just like that without it being
conscious.
• I don’t think you can.
• Oh no? Let me tell you, I can imagine something which is just like
you, an exact copy right down to the atoms, and it behaves just like
you and it even believes what you believe and wants what you want,
but it’s not conscious. It’s just a zombie. So there.
• That seems impossible to me.
• You just havn’t got enough imagination, that’s all.


• -----------
• It’s hard to see quite how to argue against this claim
directly, so rather than try to give SUFFICIENT conditions
for consciousness, I’m going to sketch some NECESSARY
conditions, to try to raise the imagination-jump bar a little
higher.


• -----------
• It’s hard to see quite how to argue against this claim
directly, so rather than try to give SUFFICIENT conditions
for consciousness, I’m going to sketch some NECESSARY
conditions, to try to raise the imagination-jump bar a little
higher.
• Basic idea is that consciousness requires a self.

methodology

• Want to give a functional account of what is essentially a
matter of phenomenology
• Danger of vacuous functional structure (Eg a C-box)
• Some disciplinary rigor provided by requirement of
evolutionary plausibility. No epiphanies.
• Humans are complicated beasties, but we don’t have
subjective reports from nonhumans. So we have to be willing
to extrapolate to simpler cases.

GOFCogSci Standard Model

• Anything known is somehow internally represented as
propositions expressed in a ‘language of thought’
• Senses keep internal world-description up to date
• World-knowledge is used to plan, react, navigate, etc.
• Awareness is restricted to content of LoT.
• Cognitive activity involves ‘information processing’ in the LoT

kiss...

(with a small addition.)
• Propositions in LoT come with provenances attached, ie
information about where the proposition came from.

• Propositions in LoT come with provenances attached, ie

on(cup,table)

• Propositions in LoT come with provenanaces attached, ie

this was seen

on(cup,table)

recorded in memory
registered
by sense S P

explanation of Q
P

Confirmed by Q,R,... P

Inferred from Q,R,... P

• Provenances are under the control of the machinery.
• They are needed for truth maintenance, ie keeping track of
corrections.

• (philosophical aside) Knowing a set of propositions might
involve more than just knowing their conjunction.

• Provenances are under the control of the machinery.
• They are needed for ‘truth maintenance’, ie keeping track of
corrections.

• (philosophical aside) Knowing a set of propositions might
involve more than just knowing their conjunction.
• (This solves the Problem of Mary, by the way.)

One approach to creating a Self
• If something which can represent things needs to know
about itself, just give it a way to represent itself to itself.

• Details get complicated. (Need a meta-theoretic self-
description supported by a reflexive architectural layer…)

Meta-management

Deliberative Reasoning

Reactive Mechanisms From A.Sloman 1999

• BUT what is being described by this meta-theory?

• What does ‘I’ refer to? (Body, mind, soul, ego, Will,…?)
Certainly not our own inference processes.

• What does ‘I’ refer to? (Body, mind, soul…?) Certainly not
our own inference processes.
• Are you the same “I” you were yesterday?

“I look at those old movies, and I wonder how I did
them. It was someone else who made them, not me. I
can recognise part of me in them, but they were made
by someone else, not by me.”
- Terry Gilliam

• The human self-concept has several
aspects

aspects
• bodily location (I am not in Kansas)

aspects
• locus of narrative memory (I recall reading Proust)

aspects
• epistemic agent (I know I left it here somewhere.)

aspects
• social agent (Do I know you?)

aspects
• source of intentionality (I was referring to the mint
sauce)

aspects
sauce)
• the ‘free will’ (I’m in charge here.)

aspects
sauce)
• …and probably more.

• source of intentionality (I was referring to the mint sauce)

bodily location

‘mental map’ requires a ‘thishere’ token to relate perceptual
input to position of body in the terrain.
This is a primitive ‘sense of self’

bodily location

‘mental map’ requires a ‘thishere’ token to relate perceptual
input to position of subject in the terrain.
This is a primitive ‘sense of self’
Purely geographical, it has no implications for mental state or
agency. Required in some form by anything which navigates
using non-egocentric spatial model.
This is routine in AI robotics and probably evolved fairly early in
animals. For things with an articulated body it gets quite
complicated.

locus of narrative memory

We humans certainly have a well-developed narrative
(episodic) memory; but what is it for?

Episodic memory provides a source from which causal
explanations can be extracted, providing a ‘temporal map’; a
way to make predictions in the future; adds ‘now’ to ‘thishere’.

way to make predictions in the future.
….abbfacytbbhabghjbaabbhafcasghbbrajkbbdaojkkllaa

bb leads to a after a short delay

bb leads to a after a short delay
….ghfklbnmsdfbb(now I can see ahead )
Delicate balance needed; too general means weak predictions, too specific
means narrow applicability.
This is still a research area in AI.

WARNING

Here we enter somewhat wilder areas of
speculation, where AI has never ventured.
Please follow me carefully and stay alert.

stability and fickleness

• Unlike AI systems, organisms must eat, and are liable to get
eaten. So they have a standing requirement to treat other
organisms in a rather special way, one that may require
sudden and precipitate action.
• It would be folly to rely solely on induction to learn the
causal habits of things that were liable to eat you.
• Beasties need to make a conceptual division of the things in
their surroundings into at least two categories: things which
are causally predictable, and things which aren’t, but which
require immediate attention when detected.


• Something is causally stable when one can reliably predict its
future behavior on the basis of past experience with things
of that sort, ie when it is reasonable to learn about its
behavior by using induction.


• Something is causally stable when one can reliably predict its
future behavior on the basis of past experience with things
of that sort, ie when it is reasonable to treat it as having a
learnable causal behavior.

• It is causally fickle when one knows that it is not causally
stable.

Probably very old; examples from human experience include surprise when you
find someone (but not someTHING) in your personal space unexpectedly (“making
someone jump”). Seems to be a crucial distinction between other ‘agents’ and other
things.

animacy
Being causally fickle is a basic aspect of animacy. Animate
entities do things for their own reasons, not because they are
causally influenced by other things.
Evidence of agency in unexpected places often are
perceived as highly startling (eg movies, automobiles,
reactive automata) until one gets used to their repertoire

The ‘intentional stance’ (Dennett) or a description at the
and feels able to recognise them.

‘knowledge level’ (Newell) represents one way to gain some
predictive power over animate entities (and it’s pretty useful
even for complicated inanimate ones.)

We are not very good at integrating these frameworks, eg
tensions felt by surgeons. I suspect that notions like
‘agency’ and ‘intentionality’ in their full-blooded senses
evolved only recently (humans and chimps may be the only
creatures who attribute mental states to others), but causal
fickleness is likely to be much older.

Knowing about knowing
The creature so far knows quite a lot about its world, and can
learn more from its experience.

But it doesn’t yet KNOW that it knows anything. It is not
reflexively aware.

reflexively aware….
…but its provenance machinery ‘knows’ something about its own
knowledge.

reflexively aware….
…but its provenance machinery ‘knows’ something about its own
knowledge.
Epistemic access to its own truth-adjusting machinery would
be one way to achieve reflexivity of knowledge, ie knowing
that it knows some of what it in fact knows.

‘Reflexivity’ of knowledge, ie knowing that it knows some of
what it in fact knows, could be of actual practical use (unlike
reflexive knowledge of its own cognitive machinery.)

Eg one can take actions to fill gaps in ones own knowledge (exploration) or
avoid taking actions when their outcome might depend critically on information
known to be missing (not stepping into the dark).

‘Reflexivity’ of knowledge, ie knowing that it knows some of
what it in fact knows, could be of actual practical use (unlike
reflexive knowledge of its own cognitive machinery.)

Eg one can take actions to fill gaps in ones own knowledge.
(exploration) or avoid taking actions when their outcome might
depend critically on information known to be missing.

This is current AI research, eg NASA ‘reactive planners’.

Epistemic gradients
On the whole, it knows more about things closer to it in space
and time, and less about things which are further away. There
is an epistemic gradient with itself at the peak.
The gradient can provide another way to identify a ‘self’: the
self is the agent which knows things about this-here-now
which nothing else knows.

Epistemic gradients
The self is the agent which knows things about this-here-now
This also can be of direct practical use, eg knowing that
nobody else knows where this-here-now is.

Some mental illness seems to be associated with a
breakdown of this, eg feelings of ‘ego transparency’
in schizophrenia.

Epistemic gradients
The self is the agent which knows things about this-here-now
This also can be of direct practical use, eg knowing that
nobody else knows where this-here-now is.
(This also fixes the Van Frassen ‘two gods’ argument.)

Epistemic gradients
Notice that the provenance of a reflexive belief is simply the
presence of a (closely related) belief. Provenances of
reflexive beliefs are something like ‘simple introspection’.

- How do you know the cup is on the table?
- Because I saw it.
-How do you know that you know that?
-?? I just know, that’s all. (What else can I say?)

sketch of overall picture
Suppose the ‘thisherenow’ is treated as a first-class entity in
the world model.
The creature must either have a very complete understanding
of its own inner functioning (which would be of no practical
use), or treat itself as causally fickle.
It knows that it does not know why it does what it does. In its
own view of itself, its actions necessarily have no causes. It
believes itself to have ‘free will’.

Suppose the ‘thisherenow’ is treated as a first-class entity in
the world model.
The creature must either have a very complete understanding
of its own inner functioning (which would be of no practical
use), or treat itself as causally fickle.
It knows that it does not know why it does what it does. In its
own view of itself, its actions necessarily have no causes. It
believes itself to have ‘free will’.
If it ever goes to graduate school, it will probably think of
itself as having ‘original intentionality’ as well.

This creature knows that it is an agent, and it knows quite a
lot about itself which (it knows) isn’t known to other agents.
Much of this knowledge has a characteristic kind of
‘immediate’ provenance. All its ‘private’ beliefs about it’s self
have a recursive provenance, in that they are derived from
other beliefs about the self, or are ‘immediate’.

This creature knows that it is an agent, and it knows quite a
lot about itself which (it knows) isn’t known to other agents.
Much of this knowledge has a characteristic kind of
‘immediate’ provenance. All its ‘private’ beliefs about it’s self
have a recursive provenance, in that they are derived from
other beliefs about the self, or are ‘immediate’.
One might characterize self-beliefs as a system of stable
orbits forming the origin of the provenance field.
Cogito, ergo sum.

What kind of game are we playing here?

• We are talking about creatures as though they were robots.
• We are using ideas from semantics, evolutionary biology and
philosophy, but talking in a technical vocabulary rooted in
computer science.
• Broader question: is this way of talking legitimate, and why (or
why not)?

What kind of game are we playing here?

• We are talking about creatures as though they were robots.
• We are using ideas from semantics, evolutionary biology and
philosophy, but talking in a technical vocabulary rooted in
computer science.
• Broader question: is this way of talking legitimate, and why (or
why not)?
• Now, THERE is a topic, surely, where philosophy should have
something to say about computers.

I, Robot

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