Saturday, November 10, 2007

Architectures for Intelligence

Architectures for Intelligence is a compilation of articles from the Carnegie Mellon 22nd symposium on cognition. It is a veritable goldmine of ideas for cognitive engineers.

Touching on a number of systems that embody topics such as rational analysis, systems that target specific AI issues to an excellent discussion of goal reconstruction. The article on goal reconstruction compliments some of the central ideologies of the Noumena Cognitive Engine, by providing discussions on combining situated actions and planned actions. There is now a definitive module inside Noumena that specifically deals/attempts to recognize and reconstruct goals that may have been interrupted or even disassociated.

The overall structure of the book is excellent because either intentionally or inadvertently a lot of the papers feed off of each other.

Other gems include a paper on self-improving systems and my favorite, "The Place of Cognitive Architectures in Rational Analysis", by John Anderson. That article has true gems (both by Anderson and referenced works) - worth the price of admission.

The Research Continues....

So the work continues, ever so methodically and ever continuous. Real life has provided it's fair of distractions but everything moves forward. I've written the basic framework (more like the scaffolding) of the engine in which GLR resides and I'm now coding up the cognitive frames. So, I'm still on track for demonstrating an early version of the GLR engine and the game that uses it next year.

Some of the books that I've been (as of late) working through include:

Artificial Consciousness, Chella
Consciousness: Natural and Artificial, Culbertson
Commonsense Reasoning, Mueller
Daydreaming,Mueller
Cognitive Carpentry, Pollock
How to Build a Person, Pollock
The Connection Machine, Hillis
Causality, Pearl
A Cognitive Theory of Consciousness, Barr
In the Theatre of Consciousness, Barr
The Philosophy of Artifical Life, Boden
Introduction to Artifical Life, Adami
Cybernetic Machines, Nemes
Cognitive Engineering
The Web of Life, Capra
Nomic Probability, Pollock
How Can the Mind Occur in the Physical Universe, Anderson
Rules of the Mind, Anderson
Atomic Components of Thought, Anderson
Exploring Complexity, Nicolis


Some more so than others, for example the Anderson books are great - not only because they've to some degree been implemented but because they provide the broadest spectrum of understanding - from a theoretical exposition to an implementation.