Creativity as Cognitive design \ud The case of mesoscopic variables in Meta-Structures\ud

Creativity is an open problem which has been differently approached by several disciplines since a long time. In this contribution we consider as creative the constructivist design an observer does on the description levels of complex phenomena, such as the self-organized and emergent ones ( e.g., Bènard rollers, Belousov-Zhabotinsky reactions, flocks, swarms, and more radical cognitive and social emergences). We consider this design as related to the Gestaltian creation of a language fit for representing natural processes and the observer in an integrated way. Organised systems, both artificial and most of the natural ones are designed/ modelled according to a logical closed model which masters all the inter-relation between their constitutive elements, and which can be described by an algorithm or a single formal model. We will show there that logical openness and DYSAM (Dynamical Usage of Models) are the proper tools for those phenomena which cannot be described by algorithms or by a single formal model. The strong correlation between emergence and creativity suggests that an open model is the best way to provide a formal definition of creativity. A specific application relates to the possibility to shape the emergence of Collective Behaviours. Different modelling approaches have been introduced, based on symbolic as well as sub-symbolic rules of interaction to simulate collective phenomena by means of computational emergence. Another approach is based on modelling collective phenomena as sequences of Multiple Systems established by percentages of conceptually interchangeable agents taking on the same roles at different times and different roles at the same time. In the Meta-Structures project we propose to use mesoscopic variables as creative design, invention, good continuity and imitation of the description level. In the project we propose to define the coherence of sequences of Multiple Systems by using the values taken on by the dynamic mesoscopic clusters of its constitutive elements, such as the instantaneous number of elements having, in a flock, the same speed, distance from their nearest neighbours, direction and altitude. In Meta-Structures the collective behaviour’s coherence corresponds, for instance, to the scalar values taken by speed, distance, direction and altitude along time, through statistical strategies of interpolation, quasi-periodicity, levels of ergodicity and their reciprocal relationship. In this case the constructivist role of the observer is considered creative as it relates to neither non-linear replication nor transposition of levels of description and models used for artificial systems, like reductionism. Creativity rather lies in inventing new mesoscopic variables able to identify coherent patterns in complex systems. As it is known, mesoscopic variables represent partial macroscopic properties of a system by using some of the microscopic degrees of freedom possessed by composing elements. Such partial usage of microscopic as well as macroscopic properties allows a kind of Gestaltian continuity and imitation between levels of descriptions for mesoscopic modelling. \ud \u

The Contribution of Society to the Construction of Individual Intelligence

It is argued that society is a crucial factor in the construction of individual intelligence. In other words that it is important that intelligence is socially situated in an analogous way to the physical situation of robots. Evidence that this may be the case is taken from developmental linguistics, the social intelligence hypothesis, the complexity of society, the need for self-reflection and autism. The consequences for the development of artificial social agents is briefly considered. Finally some challenges for research into socially situated intelligence are highlighted

Towards a more natural and intelligent interface with embodied conversation agent

Conversational agent also known as chatterbots are computer programs which are designed to converse like a human as much as their intelligent allows. In many ways, they are the embodiment of Turing's vision. The ability for computers to converse with human users using natural language would arguably increase their usefulness. Recent advances in Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) in general have advances this field in realizing the vision of a more humanoid interactive system. This paper presents and discusses the use of embodied conversation agent (ECA) for the imitation games. This paper also presents the technical design of our ECA and its performance. In the interactive media industry, it can also been observed that the ECA are getting popular

An Agent-based Simulation of the Effectiveness of Creative Leadership\ud

This paper investigates the effectiveness of creative versus\ud uncreative leadership using EVOC, an agent-based model of\ud cultural evolution. Each iteration, each agent in the artificial society invents a new action, or imitates a neighbor’s action. Only the leader’s actions can be imitated by all other agents, referred to as followers. Two measures of creativity were used: (1) invention-to-imitation ratio, iLeader, which measures how often an agent invents, and (2) rate of conceptual change, cLeader, which measures how creative an invention is. High iLeader increased mean fitness of ideas, but only when creativity of followers was low. High iLeader was associated with greater diversity of ideas in the early stage of idea generation only. High Leader increased mean fitness of ideas in the early stage of idea generation; in the later stage it decreased idea fitness. Reasons for these findings and tentative implications for creative leadership in human society are discussed

The Self-Organization of Speech Sounds

The speech code is a vehicle of language: it defines a set of forms used by a community to carry information. Such a code is necessary to support the linguistic interactions that allow humans to communicate. How then may a speech code be formed prior to the existence of linguistic interactions? Moreover, the human speech code is discrete and compositional, shared by all the individuals of a community but different across communities, and phoneme inventories are characterized by statistical regularities. How can a speech code with these properties form? We try to approach these questions in the paper, using the ``methodology of the artificial''. We build a society of artificial agents, and detail a mechanism that shows the formation of a discrete speech code without pre-supposing the existence of linguistic capacities or of coordinated interactions. The mechanism is based on a low-level model of sensory-motor interactions. We show that the integration of certain very simple and non language-specific neural devices leads to the formation of a speech code that has properties similar to the human speech code. This result relies on the self-organizing properties of a generic coupling between perception and production within agents, and on the interactions between agents. The artificial system helps us to develop better intuitions on how speech might have appeared, by showing how self-organization might have helped natural selection to find speech

Social Situatedness: Vygotsky and Beyond

The concept of ‘social situatedness’, i.e. the idea that the development of individual intelligence requires a social (and cultural) embedding, has recently received much attention in cognitive science and artificial intelligence research. The work of Lev Vygotsky who put forward this view already in the 1920s has influenced the discussion to some degree, but still remains far from well known. This paper therefore aims to give an overview of his cognitive development theory and discuss its relation to more recent work in primatology and socially situated artificial intelligence, in particular humanoid robotics

Modeling Cultural Dynamics

EVOC (for EVOlution of Culture) is a computer model of culture that enables us to investigate how various factors such as barriers to cultural diffusion, the presence and choice of leaders, or changes in the ratio of innovation to imitation affect the diversity and effectiveness of ideas. It consists of neural network based agents that invent ideas for actions, and imitate neighbors’ actions. The model is based on a theory of culture according to which what evolves through culture is not memes or artifacts, but the internal models of the world that give rise to them, and they evolve not through a Darwinian process of competitive exclusion but a Lamarckian process involving exchange of innovation protocols. EVOC shows an increase in mean fitness of actions over time, and an increase and then decrease in the diversity of actions. Diversity of actions is positively correlated with population size and density, and with barriers between populations. Slowly eroding borders increase fitness without sacrificing diversity by fostering specialization followed by sharing of fit actions. Introducing a leader that broadcasts its actions throughout the population increases the fitness of actions but reduces diversity of actions. Increasing the number of leaders reduces this effect. Efforts are underway to simulate the conditions under which an agent immigrating from one culture to another contributes new ideas while still ‘fitting in’

Beyond Gazing, Pointing, and Reaching: A Survey of Developmental Robotics

Developmental robotics is an emerging field located at the intersection of developmental psychology and robotics, that has lately attracted quite some attention. This paper gives a survey of a variety of research projects dealing with or inspired by developmental issues, and outlines possible future directions