Differences

This shows you the differences between two versions of the page.

--- public:t720-atai-2012:situatedness [2012/11/22 10:47] – thorisson
+++ public:t720-atai-2012:situatedness [2024/04/29 13:33] (current) – external edit 127.0.0.1
@@ Line 8: / Line 8: @@
 There is always an upper bound to which an agent can perceive, decide, and act: it is determined to a large extent by the implementation of its cognitive mechanisms, and by the particular computations the agent has available to do the cognitive work. Perception is of course limited by the types of available sensors (in natural or augmented form – many humans use glasses, a form of sensory augmentation) and the type of body the agent has available to act with in the world. For humans there are all kinds of augmentations to our bodies, for example automobiles, telephones, email, exoskeletons (not very common, though) and various tools we use virtually every day, such as scissors, keys, light switches, etc.
-In the beginning of any natural cognitive system's lifecycle the system is born. It is, of course, born without tools or augmentations – only natural means are provided for perceiving, thinking, and acting. The more general a cognitive agent is intended to be — the more domains or "worlds" it is supposed to be able to adapt to – the more must be learned in the formative stages. For example, if the amount of light available in the world into which it is born is not known a-priori the more requirement is put on the initial stages of the agent to "sample" the world at birth and grow the appropriate set of sensory sensory apparati that allow it to operate in that world.
+In the beginning of any natural cognitive system's lifecycle the system is born. It is, of course, born without tools or augmentations – only natural means are provided for perceiving, thinking, and acting. The more general a cognitive agent is intended to be — the more domains or "worlds" it is supposed to be able to adapt to – the more must be learned in the formative stages. For example, if the amount of light available in the world into which it is born is not known a-priori the more requirement is put on the initial stages of the agent to "sample" the world at birth and grow the appropriate set of sensory  apparati that allow it to operate in that world.
 We have already discussed that intelligence came about as a way to ensure survival of individuals (or, as Richard Dawkins has pointed out, the genes that they carry) in a world that obeys laws yet is complex – i.e. has many hidden and hard-to-see causal chains. The real world is thus a world where intelligence is playing catch-up: the world is, and will most likely continue to be, much more complex than any evolved intelligence can or will be. Any intelligent agent in such a world will therefore be limited to perceiving, thinking about, and acting on, only a fraction of the possible things it //could// be attending to. "Embodiment" in this context means thus that the agent must live with limitations on the data it can take in through the senses at any point in time, because the world presents such vastly greater amounts than the agent could ever attend to per unit time. The same goes for action: Of all the things that the agent //could// be doing, an agent with limited perceptual capabilities must limit itself to actions that use that input; in order to keep risk of perishing down, the agent's actions are limited to what it has gathered information about. Note that it does not change anything whether the world changes extremely slowly, or if the agent thinks extremely fast, because our premise is that there will always be more information per unit time available in the world than the agent could possibly attend to.