2.2 Commonly Recognized Aspects of Human-like Intelligence 23
deal with broader spacetime regions, roughly as in the DeSTIN AGI architecture discussed in Chapter 4. Further, there is evidence that each module carries out temporal predictive pattern recognition as well as static pattern recognition. Audition likely utilizes a similar hierarchy. Olfaction may use something more like a Hopfield attractor neural network, as described in Chapter 13. The networks corresponding to different sense modalities have multiple cross-linkages, more at the upper levels than the lower, and also link richly into the parts of the mind dealing with other functions.
e Motor Control: This appears to be handled by a spatiotemporal hierarchy as well, in which each level of the hierarchy corresponds to higher-level (in space and time) movements. The hierarchy is very tightly linked in with the perceptual hierarchies, allowing sensorimotor learning and coordination.
e Memory: There appear to be multiple distinct but tightly cross-linked memory systems, corresponding to different sorts of knowledge such as declarative (facts and beliefs), proce- dural, episodic, sensorimotor, attentional and intentional (goals).
e Knowledge Representation: There appear to be multiple base-level representational systems; at least one corresponding to each memory system, but perhaps more than that. Additionally there must be the capability to dynamically create new context-specific repre- sentational systems founded on the base representational system.
e Language: While there is surely some innate biasing in the human mind toward learning certain types of linguistic structure, it’s also notable that language shares a great deal of structure with other aspects of intelligence like social roles [CB00] and the physical world [Cas07]. Language appears to be learned based on biases toward learning certain types of relational role systems; and language processing seems a complex mix of generic reason- ing and pattern recognition processes with specialized acoustic and syntactic processing routines.
e Consciousness is pragmatically well-understood using Baars’ “global workspace” theory, in which a small subset of the mind’s content is summoned at each time into a “working memory” aka “workspace” aka “attentional focus” where it is heavily processed and used to guide action selection.
e Thinking is a diverse combination of processes encompassing things like categorization, (crisp and uncertain) reasoning, concept creation, pattern recognition, and others; these processes must work well with all the different types of memory and must effectively inte- grate knowledge in the global workspace with knowledge in long-term memory.
e Social Intelligence seems closely tied with language and also with self-modeling; we model ourselves in large part using the same specialized biases we use to help us model others.
a Oe
None of the points in the above bullet list is particularly controversial, but neither are any of them universally agreed-upon by experts. However, in order to make any progress on AGI design one must make some commitments to particular cognition-theoretic understandings, at this level and ultimately at more precise levels as well. Further, general philosophical analyses like the patternist philosophy to be reviewed in the following chapter only provide limited guidance here. Patternism provides a filter for theories about specific cognitive functions — it rules out assemblages of cognitive-function-specific theories that don’t fit together to yield a mind that could act effectively as a pattern-recognizing, goalachieving system with the right internal emergent structures. But it’s not a precise enough filter to serve as a sole guide for cognitive theory even at the high level.
The above list of points leads naturally into the integrative architecture diagram presented in Chapter 5. But that generic architecture diagram is fairly involved, and before presenting
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