Motivations, Values and Emotions: 3 sides of the same coin

This position paper speaks to the interrelationships between the three concepts of motivations, values, and emotion. Motivations prime actions, values serve to choose between motivations, emotions provide a common currency for values, and emotions implement motivations. While conceptually distinct, the three are so pragmatically intertwined as to differ primarily from our taking different points of view. To make these points more transparent, we briefly describe the three in the context a cognitive architecture, the LIDA model, for software agents and robots that models human cognition, including a developmental period. We also compare the LIDA model with other models of cognition, some involving learning and emotions. Finally, we conclude that artificial emotions will prove most valuable as implementers of motivations in situations requiring learning and development

How conscious experience and working memory interact

Active components of classical working memory are conscious, but traditional theory does not account for this fact. Global Workspace theory suggests that consciousness is needed to recruit unconscious specialized networks that carry out detailed working memory functions. The IDA model provides a fine-grained analysis of this process, specifically of two classical workingmemory tasks, verbal rehearsal and the utilization of a visual image. In the process, new light is shed on the interactions between conscious and unconscious\ud aspects of working memory

The Role of Consciousness in Memory

Conscious events interact with memory systems in learning, rehearsal and retrieval (Ebbinghaus 1885/1964; Tulving 1985). Here we present hypotheses that arise from the IDA computional model (Franklin, Kelemen and McCauley 1998; Franklin 2001b) of global workspace theory (Baars 1988, 2002). Our primary tool for this exploration is a flexible cognitive cycle employed by the IDA computational model and hypothesized to be a basic element of human cognitive processing. Since cognitive cycles are hypothesized to occur five to ten times a second and include interaction between conscious contents and several of the memory systems, they provide the means for an exceptionally fine-grained analysis of various cognitive tasks. We apply this tool to the small effect size of subliminal learning compared to supraliminal learning, to process dissociation, to implicit learning, to recognition vs. recall, and to the availability heuristic in recall. The IDA model elucidates the role of consciousness in the updating of perceptual memory, transient episodic memory, and procedural memory. In most cases, memory is hypothesized to interact with conscious events for its normal functioning. The methodology of the paper is unusual in that the hypotheses and explanations presented are derived from an empirically based, but broad and qualitative computational model of human cognition

A Cognitive Science Based Machine Learning Architecture

In an attempt to illustrate the application of cognitive science principles to hard AI problems in machine learning we propose the LIDA technology, a cognitive science based architecture capable of more human-like learning. A LIDA based software agent or cognitive robot will be capable of three fundamental, continuously active, humanlike learning mechanisms:\ud 1) perceptual learning, the learning of new objects, categories, relations, etc.,\ud 2) episodic learning of events, the what, where, and when,\ud 3) procedural learning, the learning of new actions and action sequences with which to accomplish new tasks. The paper argues for the use of modular components, each specializing in implementing individual facets of human and animal cognition, as a viable approach towards achieving general intelligence

LIDA: A Working Model of Cognition

In this paper we present the LIDA architecture as a working model of cognition. We argue that such working models are broad in scope and address real world problems in comparison to experimentally based models which focus on specific pieces of cognition. While experimentally based models are useful, we need a working model of cognition that integrates what we know from neuroscience, cognitive science and AI. The LIDA architecture provides such a working model. A LIDA based cognitive robot or software agent will be capable of multiple learning mechanisms. With artificial feelings and emotions as primary motivators and learning facilitators, such systems will ‘live’ through a developmental period during which they will learn in multiple ways to act in an effective, human-like manner in complex, dynamic, and unpredictable environments. We discuss the integration of the learning mechanisms into the existing IDA architecture as a working model of cognition

A Conceptual and Computational Model of Moral Decision Making in Human and Artificial Agents

Recently there has been a resurgence of interest in general, comprehensive models of human cognition. Such models aim to explain higher order cognitive faculties, such as deliberation and planning. Given a computational representation, the validity of these models can be tested in computer simulations such as software agents or embodied robots. The push to implement computational models of this kind has created the field of Artificial General Intelligence, or AGI. Moral decision making is arguably one of the most challenging tasks for computational approaches to higher order cognition. The need for increasingly autonomous artificial agents to factor moral considerations into their choices and actions has given rise to another new field of inquiry variously known as Machine Morality, Machine Ethics, Roboethics or Friendly AI. In this paper we discuss how LIDA, an AGI model of human cognition, can be adapted to model both affective and rational features of moral decision making. Using the LIDA model we will demonstrate how moral decisions can be made in many domains using the same mechanisms that enable general decision making. Comprehensive models of human cognition typically aim for compatibility with recent research in the cognitive and neural sciences. Global Workspace Theory (GWT), proposed by the neuropsychologist Bernard Baars (1988), is a highly regarded model of human cognition that is currently being computationally instantiated in several software implementations. LIDA (Franklin et al. 2005) is one such computational implementation. LIDA is both a set of computational tools and an underlying model of human cognition, which provides mechanisms that are capable of explaining how an agent’s selection of its next action arises from bottom-up collection of sensory data and top-down processes for making sense of its current situation. We will describe how the LIDA model helps integrate emotions into the human decision making process, and elucidate a process whereby an agent can work through an ethical problem to reach a solution that takes account of ethically relevant factors

Consciousness And Ethics: Artificially Conscious Moral Agents

What roles or functions does consciousness fulfill in the making of moral decisions? Will artificial agents capable of making appropriate decisions in morally charged situations require machine consciousness? Should the capacity to make moral decisions be considered an attribute essential for being designated a fully conscious agent? Research on the prospects for developing machines capable of making moral decisions and research on machine consciousness have developed as independent fields of inquiry. Yet there is significant overlap. Both fields are likely to progress through the instantiation of systems with artificial general intelligence (AGI). Certainly special classes of moral decision making will require attributes of consciousness such as being able to empathize with the pain and suffering of others. But in this article we will propose that consciousness also plays a functional role in making most if not all moral decisions. Work by the authors of this article with LIDA, a computational and conceptual model of human cognition, will help illustrate how consciousness can be understood to serve a very broad role in the making of all decisions including moral decisions

LIDA: A Systems-level Architecture for Cognition, Emotion, and Learning

Abstract-We describe a cognitive architecture (LIDA) that affords attention, action selection and human-like learning intended for use in controlling cognitive agents that replicate human experiments as well as performing real-world tasks. LIDA combines sophisticated action selection, motivation via emotions, a centrally important attention mechanism, and multimodal instructionalist and selectionist learning. Empirically grounded in cognitive science and cognitive neuroscience, the LIDA architecture employs a variety of modules and processes, each with its own effective representations and algorithms. LIDA has much to say about motivation, emotion, attention, and autonomous learning in cognitive agents. In this paper we summarize the LIDA model together with its resulting agent architecture, describe its computational implementation, and discuss results of simulations that replicate known experimental data. We also discuss some of LIDA's conceptual modules, propose non-linear dynamics as a bridge between LIDA's modules and processes and the underlying neuroscience, and point out some of the differences between LIDA and other cognitive architectures. Finally, we discuss how LIDA addresses some of the open issues in cognitive architecture research

Romanian IVF: a brief history through the ‘lens’ of labour, migration and global egg donation markets

© 2016 The Author This paper centres on a history of Romanian IVF, including the achievement of significant milestones and the establishment of key clinics. In addition to examining some of the legal and ethical aspects of IVF in Romania, the paper also details some important elements of IVF in neighbouring countries, providing a perspective on regional similarities and differences. Romania's neighbours with similar economies and national-religious contexts have very different IVF pasts and presents. This highlights the importance of migration and cross-border egg donation in understanding IVF in Romania. After providing an analysis of Romania's economy and migration, the paper examines Romania's egg donation history, arguing that it has a so-called ‘extractive reproductive economy’