Center for Analysis and Design of Intelligent Agents

This is an old revision of the document!

T-720-ATAI-2019 Main
Links to Lecture Notes

T-720-ATAI-2019

Lecture Notes, W7: Reasoning, Understanding, Curiosity, Creativity

Autonomy	The ability to do tasks without interference / help from others / outside.
Reasoning	The application of logical rules to knowledge.
Attention	The management of processing, memory, and sensory resources.
Meta-Cognition	The ability of a system to reason about itself.
Understanding	The phenomenon of “understanding” has been neglected in AI and AGI. Modern AI systems do not understand. Yet the concept seems crucial when talking about human intelligence; the concept holds explanatory power - we do not assign responsibilities for a task to someone or something with a demonstrated lack of understanding of the task. Moreover, the level of understanding can be evaluated. Understanding of a particular phenomenon <m>phi</m> is the potential to perform actions and answer questions with respect to <m>phi</m>. Example: Is an automobile heavier or lighter than a human?
	Explanation	When performed by an agent, the ability to transform knowledge about X from a formulation primarily (or only) good for execution with respect to X to a formulation good for being communicated (typically involving some form of linearization, incremental introduction of concepts and issues, in light of an intended receiving agent with a particular a-priori knowledge). Is it possible to explain something that you don't understand?
Learning	Acquisition of information in a form that enables more successful completion of tasks. We call information in such a form “knowledge” or “practical knowledge”. (There is also the concept of “impractical knowledge”, which sometimes people feel must be the case of “useless trivia” that seems to be useless for anything, but can in fact turn out to be useful at any point, as for instance using such trivia to wow others with one's knowledge of trivia.)
	Life-long Learning	Incremental acquisition of knowledge throughout a (non-trivially long) lifetime.
	Transfer Learning	The ability to transfer what has been learned in one task to another.
Imagination	The ability to evaluate potential contingencies. Also used to describe the ability to predict. Relies on reasoning and understanding.
Creativity	A measure for the uniqueness of solutions to problems produced by an agent; or the ability of an agent to produce solution(s) where other agents could not. Also used as a synonym of intelligence. An emergent property of an intelligent agent that relies on several of the above features.