Enaction-Based Artificial Intelligence: Toward Coevolution with Humans in the Loop

This article deals with the links between the enaction paradigm and artificial intelligence. Enaction is considered a metaphor for artificial intelligence, as a number of the notions which it deals with are deemed incompatible with the phenomenal field of the virtual. After explaining this stance, we shall review previous works regarding this issue in terms of artifical life and robotics. We shall focus on the lack of recognition of co-evolution at the heart of these approaches. We propose to explicitly integrate the evolution of the environment into our approach in order to refine the ontogenesis of the artificial system, and to compare it with the enaction paradigm. The growing complexity of the ontogenetic mechanisms to be activated can therefore be compensated by an interactive guidance system emanating from the environment. This proposition does not however resolve that of the relevance of the meaning created by the machine (sense-making). Such reflections lead us to integrate human interaction into this environment in order to construct relevant meaning in terms of participative artificial intelligence. This raises a number of questions with regards to setting up an enactive interaction. The article concludes by exploring a number of issues, thereby enabling us to associate current approaches with the principles of morphogenesis, guidance, the phenomenology of interactions and the use of minimal enactive interfaces in setting up experiments which will deal with the problem of artificial intelligence in a variety of enaction-based ways

La modélisation enactive

International audienceUn système modélisé en Réalité Virtuelle doit donc tenir compte à la fois des aspects psychologiques, scientifiques et informatiques. Une expertise psychologique de l’inscription de l’individu dans son environnement naturel fournit les ph énomènes qu’il faut modéliser pour un système de réalité virtuelle permettant l’immersion d’un utilisateur. La modélisation des phénomènes demande de respecter les lois des domaines étudiant ces phénomènes, par exemple pour les phénomènes naturels, il s’agit notamment des principes physiques d’interaction entre ces phénomènes. L’instrumentation informatique du système multi-modèles en interaction multi-échelles permet d’expérimenter les modèles en les faisant vivre ensemble et avec des opérateurs humains, c’est à dire de réaliser des expériences de réalité virtuelle. Cette expérimentation in virtuo peut alors être à l’origine d’une modification du système selon les trois axes : psychologique, scientifique et informatique. L’Homme est alors en énaction à travers le système de réalité virtuelle, qui est créé et façonné par son activité modélisatrice.La modélisation énactive est alors un exemple pragmatique d'une telle méthode pour l'expérimentation in virtuo

Réalité Virtuelle et énaction

Cet article argumente sur la capacité du paradigme de l'énaction, à offrir un cadre épistémologique pour le domaine de la réalité virtuelle

Frequency Locking in Tissular Coupling

International audienceWe expose a framework, inspired by biological observations, dedicated to modeling complex living systems as coupled systems. In particular, we use this framework to adress a main question in the field of living systems: the synchronization phenomenon. This kind of model, named tissular coupling, is quite general and, using different methods from those usually used in this field of research, we reach global results relative to the frequencies locking problem in both finite and continuous populations

Tissular coupling and frequency locking I finite population

International audienceSynchronization is an extremely important and interesting emergent property of complex systems. The first example found in literature goes back to the 17th century with Christiaan Huygens works. This kind of emergent behavior can be found in artificial systems as well as in natural ones and at many scales (from cell to whole ecological systems). Biology abounds of peri- odic and synchronized phenomena and the works of Ilya Prigogine showed that such behaviors arise within specific conditions: a dissipative structure gener- ally associated to a non-linear dynamic. Biological systems are open, they evolve far from thermodynamic equilibrium and are subject to numerous reg- ulating processes, leading to highly non-linear dynamics. Therefore periodic behaviors appear (with or without synchronization) at any scale. More generally, life itself is governed by circadian rhythms. Those phenomena are as much attractive as they are often spectacular: from cicada populations that appear spontaneously every ten or thirteen years or networks of heart cells that beat together to huge swarms in which fireflies, gathered in a same tree, flash simultaneously. Furthermore, beyond biology one can find a wide source of examples in completely different fields of science (e.g. in behav- ioral psychology with the example of synchronizing applause). For much more artificial and/or theoretical examples, one can consider the whole field of research that studies the coupling of smooth dynamical systems. Nowa- days, it is one of the most important subject related to non-linear systems' dynamics, especially through the notion of chaotic systems' synchronization. This wide source of examples leads the field of research to be highly interdisciplinary, from pure theory to concrete applications and experimen- tations. The classical concept of synchronization is related to the locking of the basic frequencies and instantaneous phases of regular oscillations. Those questions are usually addressed by studying specific kinds of coupled discrete or differential systems, using classical tools of the field. Convinced that synchronization phenomenon is completely natural in a large variety of coupled dynamical systems, we propose a new approach of the subject: firstly, we ask the question of synchronization differently than the usual way. Rather than trying to prove that synchronization actually takes place, we search conditions under which frequencies are locked as soon as the whole system oscillate. Secondly we enlarge the scope of handled models, by building a general framework for coupled systems called " tissular coupling ". This framework is inspired by biological observations at cell's scale, but relevant at any scale of modeling. Under some general assumptions on the kind of interactions that constitute the coupling of the systems, we prove that for a wide class of tissular coupling systems, frequencies are mutually locked to a single value as soon as the whole population is oscillating. This paper exhibits our model of tissular coupling and the frequency locking in the case of a finite number of coupled systems. In the first section we present some mathematical tools and the background we have used in order to study synchronization issue (the results exposed at the end of this paper is only a part of what we have fulfilled, and surely a really small part of what can be done using tissular coupling, this is why we state this framework in its general form). Then, we describe dynamical objects on which we focus, namely the tissular coupling and periodical motions of a population. In the second section we expose a useful way to reduce the problem to a structural one, with no more reference to the dynamics of the coupled systems. In the final section we exhibit some natural conditions under which we are able to prove the main result of this paper, a case of synchronization, in terms of frequencies locking. In a second paper [3] we expose the case of an infinite compact and connected population, which is processed with different mathematical tools

Multi-Agent Modelling of Earth's Dynamics: Towards a Virtual Laboratory of Plate Tectonics

Symposium GEOCEAN en hommage à Jean FrancheteauMACMA (Multi-Agent Convective MAntle) is a new tool developed to simulate plate tectonics and mantle convection in a 2-D cylindrical geometry (Combes et al., 2012)

Ipas : Interactive Phenomenological Animation of the Sea

International audienceNo current real time animation model of the sea simultaneously holds account of a heterogeneous water plane up to 10 km 2 with the local effects of breakings, winds, currents and shallow waters on wave groups, and this on all the wavelength scales, phenomena however essential so that maritime simulation could have meaning for sailors and remains physically believable for the eyes of oceanographers. We propose a new approach for the real time simulation of the sea: instead of numerically solving Navier-Stokes equations on a grid of points, we use oceanographical results both from theory and experiments for modeling autonomous entities, interacting in a multi agent system without any predefined grid. Our model ipas (Interactive Phenomenological Animation of the Sea) includes entities such as wave groups, active and passive breakings, local winds, shallow waters and currents. Some of the whole set of interactions are modeled

Understanding dynamic situations through context explanation.

International audienceThis article presents advantages of using context to set up a pedagogical assistance for recognition of collectives situations in Virtual Environment for Training (VET). We are focusing on generation of explanations to the learner. Two assistances types have been envisaged thanks to context using, the first one consists in guiding the learner before action and the second can be used during action. Those assistances have been set up thanks to contextual graph and consists of animations in the virtual environment

MACMA : Mantle cooling mechanisms simulated by agents

International audienceMACMA is a new simulating tool based on multiagent systems to build a virtual laboratory in Earth Sciences. Here we study Earth's mantle cooling mechanisms by superposition of analytical and empirical laws accounting for the conservation of mass, energy and momentum, together with the description of plate boundary kinematics

Multiagent simulation of evolutive plate tectonics applied to the thermal evolution of the Earth

International audience[1] The feedback between plate tectonics and mantle convection controls the Earth's thermal evolution via the seafloor age distribution. We therefore designed the MACMA model to simulate time-dependent plate tectonics in a 2D cylindrical geometry with evolutive plate boundaries, based on multiagent systems that express thermal and mechanical interactions. We compute plate velocities using a local force balance and use explicit parameterizations to treat tectonic processes such as trench migration, subduction initiation, continental breakup and plate suturing. These implementations allow the model to update its geometry and thermal state at all times. Our approach has two goals: (1) to test how empirically- and analyticallydetermined rules for surface processes affect mantle and plate dynamics, and (2) to investigate how plate tectonics impact the thermal regime. Our predictions for driving forces, plate velocities and heat flux are in agreement with independent observations. Two time scales arise for the evolution of the heat flux: a linear long-term decrease and high-amplitude short-term fluctuations due to surface tectonics. We also obtain a plausible thermal history, with mantle temperature decreasing by less than 200 K over the last 3 Gyr. In addition, we show that on the long term, mantle viscosity is less thermally influential than tectonic processes such as continental breakup or subduction initiation, because Earth's cooling rate depends mainly on its ability to replace old insulating seafloor by young thin oceanic lithosphere. We infer that simple convective considerations alone cannot account for the nature of mantle heat loss and that tectonic processes dictate the thermal evolution of the Earth