Infusing Autopoietic and Cognitive Behaviors into Digital Automata to Improve Their Sentience, Resilience, and Intelligence

All living beings use autopoiesis and cognition to manage their “life” processes from birth through death. Autopoiesis enables them to use the specification in their genomes to instantiate themselves using matter and energy transformations. They reproduce, replicate, and manage their stability. Cognition allows them to process information into knowledge and use it to manage its interactions between various constituent parts within the system and its interaction with the environment. Currently, various attempts are underway to make modern computers mimic the resilience and intelligence of living beings using symbolic and sub-symbolic computing. We discuss here the limitations of classical computer science for implementing autopoietic and cognitive behaviors in digital machines. We propose a new architecture applying the general theory of information (GTI) and pave the path to make digital automata mimic living organisms by exhibiting autopoiesis and cognitive behaviors. The new science, based on GTI, asserts that information is a fundamental constituent of the physical world and that living beings convert information into knowledge using physical structures that use matter and energy. Our proposal uses the tools derived from GTI to provide a common knowledge representation from existing symbolic and sub-symbolic computing structures to implement autopoiesis and cognitive behaviors.

Chapter 11. Neuro-Symbolic Semantic Reasoning

Humans have astounding reasoning capabilities. They can learn from very few examples while providing explanations for their decision-making process. In contrast, deep learning techniques–even though robust to noise and very effective in generalizing across several fields including machine vision, natural language understanding, speech recognition, etc. –require large amounts of data and are mostly unable to provide explanations for their decisions. Attaining human-level robust reasoning requires combining sound symbolic reasoning with robust connectionist learning. However, connectionist learning uses low-level representations–such as embeddings–rather than symbolic representations. This challenge constitutes what is referred to as the Neuro-Symbolic gap. A field of study to bridge this gap between the two paradigms has been called neuro-symbolic integration or neuro-symbolic computing. This chapter aims to present approaches that contribute towards bridging the Neuro-Symbolic gap specifically in the Semantic Web field, RDF Schema (RDFS) and EL+ reasoning and to discuss the benefits and shortcomings of neuro-symbolic reasoning.

Infusing Autopoietic and Cognitive Behaviors into Digital Automata to Improve their Sentience, Resilience and Intelligence

The holy grail of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been to mimic human intelligence using computing machines. Autopoiesis which refers to a system with well-defined identity and is capable of re-producing and maintaining itself and cognition which is the ability to process information, apply knowledge, and change the circumstance are associated with resilience and intelligence. While classical computer science (CCS) with symbolic and sub-symbolic computing has given us tools to decipher the mysteries of physical, chemical and biological systems in nature and allowed us to model, analyze various observations and use information to optimize our interactions with each other and with our environment, it falls short in reproducing even the basic behaviors of living organisms. We present the foundational shortcomings of CCS and discuss the science of infor-mation processing structures (SIPS) that allows us to fill the gaps. SIPS allows us to model su-per-symbolic computations and infuse autopoietic and cognitive behaviors into digital machines. They use common knowledge representation from the information gained using both symbolic and sub-symbolic computations in the form of system-wide knowledge networks consisting of knowledge nodes and information sharing channels with other knowledge nodes. The knowledge nodes wired together fire together to exhibit autopoietic and cognitive behaviors.

A New View of Multisensor Data Fusion: Research on Generalized Fusion

Multisensor data generalized fusion algorithm is a kind of symbolic computing model with multiple application objects based on sensor generalized integration. It is the theoretical basis of numerical fusion. This paper aims to comprehensively review the generalized fusion algorithms of multisensor data. Firstly, the development and definition of multisensor data fusion are analyzed and the definition of multisensor data generalized fusion is given. Secondly, the classification of multisensor data fusion is discussed, and the generalized integration structure of multisensor and its data acquisition and representation are given, abandoning the research characteristics of object oriented. Then, the principle and architecture of multisensor data fusion are analyzed, and a generalized multisensor data fusion model is presented based on the JDL model. Finally, according to the multisensor data generalized fusion architecture, some related theories and methods are reviewed, and the tensor-based multisensor heterogeneous data generalized fusion algorithm is proposed, and the future work is prospected.

Passages

Brian Harvey's Computer Science Logo Style (Volume 1: Symbolic Computing, Volume 2: Advanced Techniques, Volume 3: Beyond Programming) begins with the words: "This book isn't for everyone." There follows a brief account of the fact that not everyone needs to program computers, based on an economic (Marxist-flavored) tirade (that I mostly agree with). The closing of the introductory paragraphs is the part that matters, though: "This book is for people who are interested in computer programming because it's fun."

An entropic associative memory

Natural memories are associative, declarative and distributed, and memory retrieval is a constructive operation. In addition, cues of objects that are not contained in the memory are rejected directly. Symbolic computing memories resemble natural memories in their declarative character, and information can be stored and recovered explicitly; however, they are reproductive rather than constructive, and lack the associative and distributed properties. Sub-symbolic memories developed within the connectionist or artificial neural networks paradigm are associative and distributed, but lack the declarative property, the capability of rejecting objects that are not included in the memory, and memory retrieval is also reproductive. In this paper we present a memory model that sustains the five properties of natural memories. We use Relational-Indeterminate Computing to model associative memory registers that hold distributed representations of individual objects. This mode of computing has an intrinsic computing entropy which measures the indeterminacy of representations. This parameter determines the operational characteristics of the memory. Associative registers are embedded in an architecture that maps concrete images expressed in modality specific buffers into abstract representations and vice versa. The framework has been used to model a visual memory holding the representations of hand-written digits. The system has been tested with a set of memory recognition and retrieval experiments with complete and severely occluded images. The results show that there is a range of entropy values, not too low and not too high, in which associative memory registers have a satisfactory performance. The experiments were implemented in a simulation using a standard computer with a GPU, but a parallel architecture may be built where the memory operations would take a very reduced number of computing steps.

From Data Processing to Knowledge Processing: Working with Operational Schemas by Autopoietic Machines

Knowledge processing is an important feature of intelligence in general and artificial intelligence in particular. To develop computing systems working with knowledge, it is necessary to elaborate the means of working with knowledge representations (as opposed to data), because knowledge is an abstract structure. There are different forms of knowledge representations derived from data. One of the basic forms is called a schema, which can belong to one of three classes: operational, descriptive, and representation schemas. The goal of this paper is the development of theoretical and practical tools for processing operational schemas. To achieve this goal, we use schema representations elaborated in the mathematical theory of schemas and use structural machines as a powerful theoretical tool for modeling parallel and concurrent computational processes. We describe the schema of autopoietic machines as physical realizations of structural machines. An autopoietic machine is a technical system capable of regenerating, reproducing, and maintaining itself by production, transformation, and destruction of its components and the networks of processes downstream contained in them. We present the theory and practice of designing and implementing autopoietic machines as information processing structures integrating both symbolic computing and neural networks. Autopoietic machines use knowledge structures containing the behavioral evolution of the system and its interactions with the environment to maintain stability by counteracting fluctuations.

From Data Processing to Knowledge Processing: Operation with Schemas in Autopoietic Machines

Knowledge processing is an important feature of intelligence in general and artificial intelligence in particular. To develop computing systems working with knowledge, it is necessary to elaborate means of working with knowledge representations (as opposed to data) because knowledge is an abstract structure. There are different forms of knowledge representations derived from data. One of the basic forms is called a schema. The goal of this paper is the development of theoretical and practical tools for processing schemas. To achieve this goal, we use schema representations elaborated in the mathematical theory of schemas and use structural machine as a powerful theoretical tool for modeling parallel and concurrent computational processes. We describe the schema of autopoietic machines as physical realizations of structural machines. An autopoietic Machine is a technical system capable of regenerating, reproducing and maintaining itself by production, transformation and destruction of its components and the networks of processes downstream contained in them. We present the theory and practice of designing and implementing autopoietic machines as information processing structures integrating both symbolic computing and neural networks. Autopoietic machines use knowledge structures containing the behavioral evolution of the system and its interactions with the environment to maintain stability by counteracting fluctuations.