Let us revisit the architecture for a cognitive system.
We have come across this several times earlier in this course. We can think in
terms of three different spaces. A Metacognitive space, a Deliberative space,
and a Reactive space. The Reactive space directly maps percepts from
the environment into actions in the environment. The Deliberative space
maps the percepts into actions, with the mappings mediated by reasoning and
learning and memory. So, while this is a see act cycle,
this is a see think act cycle. The metacognitive space
monitors the deliberative reasoning. It sees the deliberative reasoning and
acts on the deliberative reasoning. As we had discussed earlier, it's better to
think of these in terms of overlapping spaces rather than disjoint layers.
When we were discussing metacognition we also saw that we could draw arrows back
from here like this because metacognition could also act on its own.
This cognitive system is situated in the world.
It is getting many different kind of input from the world. Percepts,
signals, goals, communication with other agents. Depending on the input, and
depending upon the resources available to the agent to address that input,
the agent may simply react to the input and give an output in the form of
an action to a percept, for example. Or the agent may reason about the input.
And then decide on an action after consulting memory and
perhaps invoking learning and reasoning. In some cases,
the input that the agent receives might be as a result of the output it
had given to a prior input. For example, it may have received a goal.
Then come up with a plan. When it had received the input of the plan,
failed upon execution. In that case, deliberation can give an alternative plan.
A metacognition may wonder about, why did the planner fail in the first place?
And repair the planner, not just the plan. Just like reaction and
deliberation are situated in the world outside, metacognition, in a way,
is situated in the world inside. It is acting on the mental world.
While deliberation and reaction act on the objects in the external environment.
For metacognition it is the thoughts and the learning and
the reasoning that are objects internally in the amygdala. Of course,
this input is coming constantly. Even now, as you and I are communicating,
both you and I are receiving input. And we're giving output as well. In fact,
the cognitive system is constantly situated in the world. It is never separate
from the world. There is no way to separate it. It has input coming constantly.
There is output going out constantly. The world is constantly changing,
and the cognitive system is constantly receiving information about the world.
It uses this knowledge in it's knowledge structure to make sense of
the data about the world. And it decides on actions to take on the world.
Recall that we had said that intelligence is a function that maps the perceptual
history into action. And to some degree, intelligence is about actions,
reactions. About selecting your right output to act on the world. Depending on
the nature of the input the output may vary. If the input is a goal,
the output might be a plan or an action. If the input is a piece of knowledge,
the output might be internal to the cognitive system. And
the cognitive system may assimilate that knowledge in its internal structures.
If the input is a percept, the output might be an action based on that percept.
If the input is new information, the cognitive system will learn from the new
information, and then store the result of the learning in its memory. The world
here consists not just of the physical world, but of the social world as well.
Thus, this cognitive system is situated not just in the physical world but
is also situated in the social world, consisting of other cognitive systems and
constantly interacts with them. Once again, the interactions between these
cognitive systems can be of many different kinds. Percepts, goals, actions,
plans, information, data. Any cognitive system is not just monitoring and
observing the physical world, but it's also monitoring and
observing the social world, the actions of other cognitive systems in the world,
for example. Any cognitive system learns not just from its own actions but also
from the actions of other cognitive systems around it. Thus a cognitive system
needs to make sense not just to the physical world but also by the social world.
We saw some of this when we were talking about scripts.
There we saw how a cognitive system used a script to make sense of the actions
of other cognitive systems. This architecture is not merely an architecture for
building AI agents, it is also an architecture for reflecting on human
cognition. Does this architecture explain large portions of human behavior?