A Formal Model of Intelligent Agents

Chapter 7 A Formal Model of Intelligent Agents 7.1 Introduction The artificial intelligence field is full of sophisticated mathematical models and equations, but most of these are highly specialized in nature — e.g. formalizations of particular logic systems, analyzes of the dynamics of specific sorts of neural nets, etc. On the other hand, a number of highly general models of intelligent systems also exist, including Hutter’s recent formalization of universal intelligence [[ut05] and a large body of work in the disciplines of systems science and cybernetics — but these have tended not to yield many specific lessons useful for engineering AGI systems, serving more as conceptual models in mathematical form. It would be fantastic to have a mathematical theory bridging these extremes — a real "general theory of general intelligence," allowing the derivation and analysis of specific structures and processes playing a role in practical AGI systems, from broad mathematical models of general intelligence in various situations and under various constraints. However, the path to such a theory is not entirely clear at present; and, as valuable as such a theory would be, we don’t believe such a thing to be necessary for creating advanced AGI. One possibility is that the development of such a theory will occur contemporaneously and synergetically with the advent of practical AGI technology. Lacking a mature, pragmatically useful "general theory of general intelligence," however, we have still found it valuable to articulate certain theoretical ideas about the nature of general intelligence, with a level of rigor a bit greater than the wholly informal discussions of the previous chapters. The chapters in this section of the book articulate some ideas we have developed in pursuit of a general theory of general intelligence; ideas that, even in their current relatively undeveloped form, have been very helpful in guiding our concrete work on the CogPrime design. This chapter presents a more formal version of the notion of intelligence as “achieving complex goals in complex environments,” based on a formal model of intelligent agents. These formal- izations of agents and intelligence will be used in later chapters as a foundation for formalizing other concepts like inference and cognitive synergy. Chapters 8 and 9 pursue the notion of cog- nitive synergy a little more thoroughly than was done in previous chapters. Chapter 10 sketches a general theory of general intelligence using tools from category theory — not bringing it to the level where one can use it to derive specific AGI algorithms and structures; but still, presenting ideas that will be helpful in interpreting and explaining specific aspects of the CogPrime design in Part 2. Finally, Appendix ?? explores an additional theoretical direction, in which the mind of an intelligent system is viewed in terms of certain curved spaces — a novel way of thinking 129 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_013045