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| public:t-720-atai:atai-19:lecture_notes_architectures [2019/10/01 07:49] – [System Architecture] thorisson | public:t-720-atai:atai-19:lecture_notes_architectures [2024/04/29 13:33] (current) – external edit 127.0.0.1 |
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| | ====Self-Programming ==== |
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| ====High-Level View of AERA==== | |
| | AERA | The Auto-Catalytic Endogenous Reflective Architecture is an AGI-aspiring self-programming system that combines feedback and feed-forward control in a model-based and model-driven system that is programmed with a seed. | | | What it is | //Self-programming// here means, with respect to some virtual machine <m>M</m>, the production of one or more programs created by <m>M</m> itself, whose //principles// for creation were provided to <m>M</m> at design time, but whose details were //decided by// <m>M</m> //at runtime // based on its //experience//. | |
| | {{/public:t-720-atai:aera-high-level-2018.png?700}} || | | Self-Generated Program | Determined by some factors in the interaction between the system and its environment. | |
| | High-level view of the three main functions at work in a running AERA system and their interaction with its knowledge store. || | | Historical note | Concept of self-programming is old (J. von Neumann one of the first to talk about self-replication in machines). However, few if any proposals for how to achieve this has been fielded. [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann_universal_constructor|Von Neumann's universal constructor on Wikipedia]] | |
| | \\ Models | All models are stored in a central //memory//, and the three processes of //planning//, //attention// (resource management) and //learning// happen as a result of programs that operate on models by matching, activating, and scoring them. Models that predict correctly -- not just "what happens next?" but also "what will happen if I do X?" -- get a success point. Every time a model 'fires' like that it gets counted, so the ratio of success over counts gives you the "goodness" of a model. \\ Models that have the lowest scores are deleted, models with a good score that suddenly fail result in the generation of new versions of itself (think of it as hypotheses for why it failed this time), and this process over time increases the quality and utility of the knowledge of the controller, in other words it //learns//. | | | No guarantee | The fact that a system has the ability to program itself is not a guarantee that it is in a better position than a traditional system. In fact, it is in a worse situation because in this case there are more ways in which its performance can go wrong. | |
| | \\ Attention | Attention is nothing more than resource management, in the case of cognitive controllers it typically involves management of knowledge, time, energy, and computing power. Attention in AERA is the set of functions that decides how the controller uses its compute time, how long it "mulls things over", and how far into the future it allows itself to "think". It also involves which models the system works with at any point in time, how much it explores models outside of the obvious candidate set at any point in time. | | | Why we need it | The inherent limitations of hand-coding methods make traditional manual programming approaches unlikely to reach a level of a human-grade generally intelligent system, simply because to be able to adapt to a wide range of tasks, situations, and domains, a system must be able to modify itself in more fundamental ways than a traditional software system is capable of. | |
| | \\ Planning | Planning is the set of operations involved with looking at alternative ways of proceeding, based on predictions into the future and the quality of the solutions found so far, at any point in time. The plans produced by AERA are of a mixed opportunistic (short time horizon)/firm commitment (long time horizon) kind, and their stability (subject to change drastically over their course) depend solely on the dependability of the models involved -- i.e. how well the models represent what is actually going on in the world (including the controllers "mind"). | | | Remedy | Sufficiently powerful principles are needed to insure against the system going rogue. | |
| | Learning | Learning happens as a result of the accumulation of models; as they increasingly describe "reality" better (i.e. their target phenomenon) they get better for planning and attention, which in turn improves the learning. | | | The Self of a machine | **C1:** The processes that act on the world and the self (via senctors) evaluate the structure and execution of code in the system and, respectively, synthesize new code. \\ **C2:** The models that describe the processes in C1, entities and phenomena in the world -- including the self in the world -- and processes in the self. Goals contextualize models and they also belong to C2. \\ **C3:** The states of the self and of the world -- past, present and anticipated -- including the inputs/outputs of the machine. | |
| | Memory | AREA's "global knowledge base" is in some ways similar to the idea of blackboards: AERA stores all its knowledge in a "global workspace" or memory. Unlike (Selfridge's idea of) blackboards, the blackboard contains executive functions that manage the knowledge dynamically, in addition to "the experts", which in AERA's case are very tiny and better thought of as "models with codelet helpers". | | | Bootstrap code | A.k.a. the "seed". Bootstrap code may consist of ontologies, states, models, internal drives, exemplary behaviors and programming skills. | |
| | Pervasive Use of Codelets | A //codelet// is a piece of code that is smaller than a typical self-contained program, typically a few lines long, and can only be executed in particular contexts. Programs are constructed on the fly by the operation of the whole system selecting which codelets to run when, based on the knowledge of the system, the active goals, and the state it finds itself in at any point in time. | | |
| | \\ No "Modules" | Note that the diagram above may imply the false impression that AERA consists of these four software "modules", or "classes", or the like. Nothing could be further from the truth: All of AERA's mechanism above are a set of functions that are "welded in with" the operation of the whole system, distributed in a myriad of mechanisms and actions. \\ Does this mean that AERA is spaghetti code, or a mess of a design? On the contrary, the integration and overlap of various mechanisms to achieve the high-level functions depicted in the diagram are surprisingly clean, simple, and coherent in their implementation and operation. \\ This does not mean, however, that AERA is easy to understand -- mainly because it uses concepts and implements mechanisms and relies on concepts that are //very different// from most traditional software systems commonly recognized in computer science. | | |
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| | ==== Programming for Self-Programming ==== |
| ====Autonomous Model Acquisition==== | | Can we use LISP? | Any language with similar features as LISP (e.g. Haskel, Prolog, etc.), i.e. the ability to inspect itself, turn data into code and code into data, should //in theory// be capable of sustaining a self-programming machine. | |
| | What it is | The ability to create a model of some target phenomenon //automatically//. | | | Theory vs. practice | "In theory" is most of the time //not good enough// if we want to see something soon (as in the next decade or two), and this is the case here too; what is good for a human programmer is not so good for a system having to synthesize its own code in real-time. | |
| | Challenge | Unless we know beforehand which signals cause perturbations in <m>o</m> and can hard-wire these from the get-go in the controller, the controller must search for these signals. \\ In task-domains where the number of available signals is vastly greater than the controller's resources available to do such search, it may take an unacceptable time for the controller to find good predictive variables to create models with. \\ <m>V_te >> V_mem</m>, where the former is the total number of potentially observable and manipulatable variables in the task-environment and the latter is the number of variables that the agent can hold in its memory at any point in time. | | | Why? | Building a machine that can write (sensible, meaningful!) programs means that machine is smart enough to understand the code it produces. If the purpose of its programming is to //become//smart, and the programming language we give to it //assumes it's smart already//, we have defeated the purpose of creating the self-programming machine in the first place. | |
| | | What can we do? | We must create a programming language with //simple enough// semantics so that a simple machine (perhaps with some clever emergent properties) can use it to bootstrap itself in learning to write programs. | |
| | | Does such a language exist? | Yes. It's called [[http://alumni.media.mit.edu/~kris/ftp/nivel_thorisson_replicode_AGI13.pdf|Replicode]]. | |
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| ====Model Acquisition Function==== | |
| | {{public:t-720-atai:agent-with-model-gen-function1.png?300}} || | |
| | The agent has a model generation function <m>P_M</m> implemented in its controller. The role of the function is to take observed chains of events and produce models intended to capture the events' causal relationships. || | |
| | {{public:t-720-atai:causal-chain_agent1.png?400}} || | |
| | A learning agent is situated so as to perceive the effects of the relationships between variables. \\ The agent observes the interaction between the variables for a while, rendering some data about their relations (but not enough to be certain about it, and certainly not enough to create a complete model of it). \\ This generates hypotheses about the relation between variables, in the form of candidate relational models of the observed events. || | |
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| ==== Model Generation & Evaluation ==== | \\ |
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| | {{public:t-720-atai:three-models-1.png?400}} | | ====The SOAR Architecture==== |
| | Based on prior observations, of the variables and their temporal execution in some context, the controller's model generation function <m>P_M</m> may have captured their causal relationship in three alternative models, <m>M_1, M_2, M_3</m>, each slightly but measurably different from the others. Each can be considered a //hypothesis of the actual relationship between the included variables//, when in the context provided by <m>V_5, V_6</m>. | | |
| | {{public:t-720-atai:agent-with-models-1.png?300}} | | |
| | The agent's model generation mechanisms allow it to produce models of events it sees. Here it creates models (a) <m>M_1</m> and (b) <m>M_2</m>. The usefulness / utility of these models can be tested by performing an operation on the world (c ) as prescribed by the models. (Ideally, when one wants to find on which one is best, the most efficient method is an (energy-preserving) intervention that can only leave one as the winner.) | | |
| | {{public:t-720-atai:model-m2-prime-1.png?150}} | | |
| | The result of feedback (reinforcement) may result in the deletion, rewriting, or some other modification of the original model selected for prediction. Here the feedback has resulted in a modified model <m>M{prime}_2</m>. | | |
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| | | What it is | One of the oldest cognitive architectures in history. | |
| | | Why is it important | One of the oldest AGI-aspiring systems in history. | |
| | | How does it work | Reasoning engine does pattern-matching with hand-coded 'production' rules and 'operators' to solve problems, with an ability to "chunk" - create 'shortcuts' for long transitive reasoning chains. Upon 'impasse' (break in the flow of reasoning/problemsolving) a reasoning process tries to resolve it via successive application of relevant rules. | |
| | | Recent Additionns | Reinforcement learning for steering reasoning. Sub-symbolic processing for low-level perception. | |
| | | Missing in Action | Attention (resource control, self-control), symbolic learning (other than chunking). | |
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| | SOAR is a relatively mature cognitive architecture that has been used by many researchers worldwide during its 20 year life span. During this time it has also been revised and extended in a number of ways. The architecture consists of heterogenous components that interact during each decision cycle. These are working memory and three types of long-term memory: semantic, procedural and episodic. Working memory is where information related to the present is stored with its contents being supplied by sensors or copied from other memory structures based on relevancy to the present situation. Working memory also contains an activation mechanism, used in conjunction with episodic memory, that indicates the relevancy and usefulness of working memory elements. Production rules are matched and fired on the contents of working memory during the decision cycle, implementing both an associative memory mechanism (as rules can bring data from long-term memory into working memory) and action selection (as rules propose, evaluate and apply operators). Operators are procedural data stored in procedural memory. The application of an operator is carried out by a production rule and either causes changes in the working memory or triggers an external action. In cases where operator selection fails due to insufficient knowledge, an impasse event occurs and a process to resolve the impasse is started. This process involves reasoning and inference upon existing knowledge using the same decision cycle in a recursive fashion, the results of this process are converted to production rules by a process termed chunking. Reinforcement learning is used for production rules relating to operator selection to maximize future rewards in similar situations. One of the most recent additions to the SOAR architecture is sub-symbolic processing used for visual capabilities, where the bridge between sub-symbolic to symbolic processing consists of feature detection. As the working memory can contain execution traces, introspective abilities are possible. |
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| | The SOAR architecture provides one of the largest collection of simultaneous running cognitive processes of any cognitive architecture so far. However, there is no explicit mechanism for control of attention and the architecture is not designed for real-time operation. The latter may be especially problematic as execution is in strict step-lock form and in particular, the duration (amount of computation) in each decision cycle can vary greatly due to impasse events that are raised occasionally. One might argue that the development of SOAR has been somewhat characterized by "adding boxes" (components) to the architecture when it might be better to follow a more unified approach putting integration at the forefront. |
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| | There are a few cognitive architectures that somewhat resemble SOAR and can be placed categorically on the same track. These include ICARUS, which has a strong emphasis on embodiment and has shown promise in terms of generality in a number of toy problems such as in-city driving, and LIDA which was developed for the US Navy to automatically organize and negotiate assignments with sailors but does not have embodiment as a design goal. As in SOAR, both of these implement different types of memory in specialized components and have a step-locked decision cycle. |
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| | 2013(c)Helgi P. Helgason |
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| | ====The AERA System==== |
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| | The Auto-catalytic Endogenous Reflective Architecture – AERA – is an AGI-aspiring architectural blueprint that was produced as part of the HUMANOBS FP7 project. It encompasses several fundamentally new ideas in the history of AI, including a new programming language specifically conceived to solve some major limitations of prior efforts in this respect, including self-inspection and self-representation, distributed representation of knowledge, and distributed reasoning. AERA systems are any-time, real-time, incremental/continuous learning, on-line learning systems. |
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| | AERA's knowledge is stored in models, which essentially encode transformations on input, to produce output. Models have a trigger side (left-hand side) and a result side (right-hand side). In a forward-chaining scenario, when a particular piece of data matches on the left hand of a model (it is only allowed to test the match if the data has high enough saliency and the program has sufficient activation) the model fires, producing the output specified by its left-hand side and injecting it into a global memory store. The semantics of the output is prediction, and the semantics of the input is either fact or prediction. Notice that a model in AERA is not a production rule; a model relating A to B does not mean “A entails B”, it means A predicts B, and it has an associated confidence value. Such models stem invariably (read: most of the time) from the system's experience, and in early stages of learning an AERA-based system's set of models may mostly consist fairly useless and bad models, all with relatively low confidence values (“not all models are created equal – some are in fact better than others”). |
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| | In backward-chaining – to implement the process of abduction – models act the other way around, namely, when some data match the right-hand side, a model produces new data patterned after its left side, whose semantics essentially state that “if you want a B (on the right-hand side) perhaps it would help to get an A (term on the left-hand side). The semantics of either (both the input and output) is “goal”. |
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| | A key principle of AERA operation is that of a distributed production process: Each program in AERA has a level of activation that determines if it is allowed to run or not. Every piece of data has a corresponding saliency level that determines how visible it is inside the system. In AERA there is a single memory, but it (typically) embeds groups that allow sets of data and programs to be addressed, e.g. changing their activation, saliency, or existence (via creation or deletion). |
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| | ====High-Level View of AERA==== |
| | | AERA | The Auto-Catalytic Endogenous Reflective Architecture is an AGI-aspiring self-programming system that combines feedback and feed-forward control in a model-based and model-driven system that is programmed with a seed. | |
| | | {{/public:t-720-atai:aera-high-level-2018.png?700}} || |
| | | High-level view of the three main functions at work in a running AERA system and their interaction with its knowledge store. || |
| | | \\ Models | All models are stored in a central //memory//, and the three processes of //planning//, //attention// (resource management) and //learning// happen as a result of programs that operate on models by matching, activating, and scoring them. Models that predict correctly -- not just "what happens next?" but also "what will happen if I do X?" -- get a success point. Every time a model 'fires' like that it gets counted, so the ratio of success over counts gives you the "goodness" of a model. \\ Models that have the lowest scores are deleted, models with a good score that suddenly fail result in the generation of new versions of itself (think of it as hypotheses for why it failed this time), and this process over time increases the quality and utility of the knowledge of the controller, in other words it //learns//. | |
| | | \\ Attention | Attention is nothing more than resource management, in the case of cognitive controllers it typically involves management of knowledge, time, energy, and computing power. Attention in AERA is the set of functions that decides how the controller uses its compute time, how long it "mulls things over", and how far into the future it allows itself to "think". It also involves which models the system works with at any point in time, how much it explores models outside of the obvious candidate set at any point in time. | |
| | | \\ Planning | Planning is the set of operations involved with looking at alternative ways of proceeding, based on predictions into the future and the quality of the solutions found so far, at any point in time. The plans produced by AERA are of a mixed opportunistic (short time horizon)/firm commitment (long time horizon) kind, and their stability (subject to change drastically over their course) depend solely on the dependability of the models involved -- i.e. how well the models represent what is actually going on in the world (including the controllers "mind"). | |
| | | Learning | Learning happens as a result of the accumulation of models; as they increasingly describe "reality" better (i.e. their target phenomenon) they get better for planning and attention, which in turn improves the learning. | |
| | | Memory | AREA's "global knowledge base" is in some ways similar to the idea of blackboards: AERA stores all its knowledge in a "global workspace" or memory. Unlike (Selfridge's idea of) blackboards, the blackboard contains executive functions that manage the knowledge dynamically, in addition to "the experts", which in AERA's case are very tiny and better thought of as "models with codelet helpers". | |
| | | Pervasive Use of Codelets | A //codelet// is a piece of code that is smaller than a typical self-contained program, typically a few lines long, and can only be executed in particular contexts. Programs are constructed on the fly by the operation of the whole system selecting which codelets to run when, based on the knowledge of the system, the active goals, and the state it finds itself in at any point in time. | |
| | | \\ No "Modules" | Note that the diagram above may imply the false impression that AERA consists of these four software "modules", or "classes", or the like. Nothing could be further from the truth: All of AERA's mechanism above are a set of functions that are "welded in with" the operation of the whole system, distributed in a myriad of mechanisms and actions. \\ Does this mean that AERA is spaghetti code, or a mess of a design? On the contrary, the integration and overlap of various mechanisms to achieve the high-level functions depicted in the diagram are surprisingly clean, simple, and coherent in their implementation and operation. \\ This does not mean, however, that AERA is easy to understand -- mainly because it uses concepts and implements mechanisms and relies on concepts that are //very different// from most traditional software systems commonly recognized in computer science. | |
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| ====Demo Of AERA In Action==== | \\ |
| | Demos | The most complex demo of an AERA system was the S1 agent learning to do an interview (in the EU-funded HUMANOBS research project). [[http://www.mindmakers.org/projects/humanobs/wiki/HUMANOBS_Videos|Main HUMANOBS page]] | | |
| | TV Interview | In the style of a TV interview, the agent S1 watched two humans engaged in a "TV-style" interview about the recycling of six everyday objects made out of various materials. | | |
| | Data | S1 received realtime timestamped data from the 3D movement of the humans (digitized via appropriate tracking methods at 20 Hz), words generated by a speech recognizer, and prosody (fundamental pitch of voice at 60 Hz, along with timestamped starts and stops). | | |
| | Seed | The seed consisted of a handful of top-level goals for each agent in the interview (interviewer and interviewee), and a small knowledge base about entities in the scene. | | |
| | What Was Given | * actions: grab, release, point-at, look-at (defined as event types constrained by geometric relationships) \\ * stopping the interview clock ends the session \\ * objects: glass-bottle, plastic-bottle, cardboard-box, wodden-cube, newspaper, wooden-cube \\ * objects have properties (e.g. made-of) \\ * interviewee-role \\ * interviewer-role \\ * Model for interviewer \\ * top-level goal of interviewer: prompt interviewee to communicate \\ * in interruption case: an imposed interview duration time limit \\ * Models for interviewee \\ * top-level goal of interviewee: to communicate \\ * never communicate unless prompted \\ * communicate about properties of objects being asked about, for as long as there still are properties available \\ * don’t communicate about properties that have already been mentioned | | |
| | What Had To Be Learned | GENERAL INTERVIEW PRINCIPLES \\ * word order in sentences (with no a-priori grammar) \\ * disambiguation via co-verbal deictic references \\ * role of interviewer and interviewee \\ * interview involves serialization of joint actions (a series of Qs and As by each participant) \\ \\ MULTIMODAL COORDINATION & JOINT ACTION \\ * take turns speaking \\ * co-verbal deictic reference \\ * manipulation as deictic reference \\ * looking as deictic reference \\ * pointing as deictic reference \\ \\ INTERVIEWER \\ * to ask a series of questions, not repeating questions about objects already addressed \\ * “thank you” stops the interview clock \\ * interruption condition: using “hold on, let’s go to the next question” can be used to keep interview within time limits \\ \\ INTERVIEWEE \\ * what to answer based on what is asked \\ * an object property is not spoken of if it is not asked for \\ * a silence from the interviewer means “go on” \\ * a nod from the interviewer means “go on” | | |
| | Result | After having observed two humans interact in a simulated TV interview for some time, the AERA agent S1 takes the role of interviewee, continuing the interview in precisely the same fasion as before, answering the questions of the human interviewer (see videos HH.no_interrupt.mp4 and HH.no_interrupt.mp4 for the human-human interaction that S1 observed; see HM.no_interrupt_mp4 and HM_interrupt_mp4 for other examples of the skills that S1 has acquired by observation). In the "interrupt" scenario S1 has learned to use interruption as a method to keep the interview from going over a pre-defined time limit. \\ \\ The results are recorded in a set of three videos: \\ [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SH6tQ4fgWA4|Human-human interaction]] (what S1 observes) \\ [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SH6tQ4fgWA4|Human-S1 interaction]] (S1 interviewing a human) \\ [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x96HXLPLORg|S1-Human Interaction]] (S1 being interviewed by a human) | | |
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| 2018(c)K. R. Thórisson | |
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| | 2019(c)K. R. Thórisson |
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| //EOF// | //EOF// |
