View - ResearchGate

42 Socially Intelligent Agents2 a set of candidate strategies for obtaining its goals (this roughly correspondingto plans); each strategy would also be composed of severalparts: the goal; the sequence of actions, including branches dependentupon outcomes, loops etc.; (possibly) its past endorsements as to its pastsuccess.These could be developed using a combination of anticipatory learning theory[15] as reported in [21] and evolutionary computation techniques. Thusrather than a process of inferring sub-goals, plans etc. they would be constructivelylearnt (similar to that in [9] and as suggested by [19]). The languageof these models needs to be expressive, so that an open-ended model structuresuch as in genetic programming [17] is appropriate, with primitives to cover allappropriate actions and observations. Direct self-reference in the language toitself is not built-in, but the ability to construct labels to distinguish one’s ownconditions, perceptions and actions from those of others is important as wellas the ability to give names to individuals. The language of communicationneeds to be a combinatorial one, one that can be combinatorially generated bythe internal language and also deconstructed by the same.The social situation of the agent needs to have a combination of complexcooperative and competitive pressures in it. The cooperation is necessary ifcommunication is at all to be developed and the competitive element is necessaryin order for it to be necessary to be able to predict other’s actions [18].The complexity of the cooperative/competitive mix encourages the predictionof one’s own decisions. A suitable environment is where, in order to gainsubstantial reward, cooperation is necessary, but that inter-group competitionoccurs as well as competition for the dividing up of the rewards that are gainedby a cooperative group.Many of the elements of this model have already been implemented in pilotsystems [9]; [11]; [21].6. Consequences for Agent Production and UseIf we develop agents in this way, allowing them to learn their selves fromwithin a human culture, we may have developed agents such that we can relateto them because they will be able to relate to us etc. The sort of social gameswhich involve second guessing, lying, posturing, etc. will be accessible tothe agent due to the fundamental empathy that is possible between agent andhuman. Such an agent would not be an ’alien’ but (like some of the humanswe relate to) all the more unsettling for that. To achieve this goal we willhave to at least partially abandon the design stance and move more towards anenabling stance and accept the necessity of considerable acculturation of ouragents within our society much as we do with our children.