Agents in the Society of Mind

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Agents in the Society of Mind

• EEL 6938
• William Walters

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The Society of the Mind

• Marvin Minsky
• M.I.T. Professor
• A.I., cognitive psychology, mathematics
• Common sense reasoning
• Book
• Concept of how the mind works
• Organization of book

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Agents and Agencies

• Mind is made up of many small processes, each
  small process is an agent
• Agents have no intelligence
• Agents can only do simple task
• An agency is many agents put together
• Agencies appear to have intelligence

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Cup of tea

• Agents
• Grasping
• Balancing
• Thirst
• Moving
• Millions of things going on and no one thinks
  about them

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Common Sense

• Making machines do common sense tasks are the
  most difficult
• Children learn common sense early
• Dont use same block
• What if tower sways
• Is tower too tall
• Is foundation insecure
• Was last block placed too roughly

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Blocks

• Why Blocks
• 1960s built builder

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Conflict

• Conflicts go to higher agents and weaken them

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Reward

• Snarc, maze and predator
• Couldnt solve complicated problems
• Only learn last steps before reward
• Reinforcement learning not for complicated
  problems
• Beavers and dams

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Memory

• K-Lines
• Bicycle example

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Knowledge-Tree

• Jack is flying his kite

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Emotion

• Can intelligent machines have emotion?
• Can machines be intelligent without emotions?
• Thoughts and emotions intertwined
• Anger
• Thirst
• Hunger
• Fear

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Language Agency

• Agents
• Polynemes long-term memories
• Isonomes short-term memories

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Ambiguity

• I wrote a note to my sister.
• Comment
• Banknote
• Musical Sound
• The astronomer married the star.
• John shot two bucks.

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Old Agents and New Agents

• Old agents know less than new ones
• Old agents are the foundation the new
• Losing old agents

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Confusion of Agents
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References

• Minsky, Marvin. The Society of the Mind, Simon
  and Schuster, New York 1985.
• http//web.media.mit.edu/minsky/