Adaptation to criticality through organizational invariance in embodied agents

Many biological and cognitive systems do not operate deep within one or other regime of activity. Instead, they are poised at critical points located at phase transitions in their parameter space. The pervasiveness of criticality suggests that there may be general principles inducing this behaviour, yet there is no well-founded theory for understanding how criticality is generated at a wide span of levels and contexts. In order to explore how criticality might emerge from general adaptive mechanisms, we propose a simple learning rule that maintains an internal organizational structure from a specific family of systems at criticality. We implement the mechanism in artificial embodied agents controlled by a neural network maintaining a correlation structure randomly sampled from an Ising model at critical temperature. Agents are evaluated in two classical reinforcement learning scenarios: the Mountain Car and the Acrobot double pendulum. In both cases the neural controller appears to reach a point of criticality, which coincides with a transition point between two regimes of the agent's behaviour. These results suggest that adaptation to criticality could be used as a general adaptive mechanism in some circumstances, providing an alternative explanation for the pervasive presence of criticality in biological and cognitive systems.Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1704.0525

Against Animats

Animats are artificial animals, a contraction of anima-materials. The term includes physical robots and virtual simulations. Animat research, a subset of Artificial Life studies, has become rather popular since Rodney Brooks' seminal paper "Intelligence without representation". The word was coined by S.W. Wilson in 1991, in the first proceedings of the Simulation of Adaptive Behaviour, which was also called From Animals to Animats

Exploring Criticality as a Generic Adaptive Mechanism

The activity of many biological and cognitive systems is not poised deep within a specific regime of activity. Instead, they operate near points of critical behavior located at the boundary between different phases. Certain authors link some of the properties of criticality with the ability of living systems to generate autonomous or intrinsically generated behavior. However, these claims remain highly speculative. In this paper, we intend to explore the connection between criticality and autonomous behavior through conceptual models that show how embodied agents may adapt themselves toward critical points. We propose to exploit maximum entropy models and their formal descriptions of indicators of criticality to present a learning model that drives generic agents toward critical points. Specifically, we derive such a learning model in an embodied Boltzmann machine by implementing a gradient ascent rule that maximizes the heat capacity of the controller in order to make the network maximally sensitive to external perturbations. We test and corroborate the model by implementing an embodied agent in the Mountain Car benchmark test, which is controlled by a Boltzmann machine that adjusts its weights according to the model. We find that the neural controller reaches an apparent point of criticality, which coincides with a transition point of the behavior of the agent between two regimes of behavior, maximizing the synergistic information between its sensors and the combination of hidden and motor neurons. Finally, we discuss the potential of our learning model to answer questions about the connection between criticality and the capabilities of living systems to autonomously generate intrinsic constraints on their behavior. We suggest that these “critical agents” are able to acquire flexible behavioral patterns that are useful for the development of successful strategies in different contexts

Agentes Autonomos con Arquitectura CBR-BDI

Este articulo introduce un formalismo matematico robusto para la definition ydesarrollo de agentes deliberativos con un motor de razonamiento basado en casos.El concepto de agente deliberative es introducido y el modelo de sistema basado encasos es descrito utilizando un formalismo analftico. Se introduce posteriormenteel calculo variational para facilitar a los agentes herramientas de planificacion yreplanificacion de sus intenciones de forma que puedan reaccionar a los cambiosdel entorno en tiempo real. El continuo desarrollo en la industria turistica y laadaptation de procesos que, mediante las nuevas tecnologias, se esta haciendo,nos sugiere la formalization de un agente que asista a potenciales turistas en laorganization de sus vacaciones y sea capaz de modificar sus horarios a traves desistemas de comunicacion moviles

Hacia una teoría de la mente corporizada: la influencia de los mecanismos sensomotores en el desarrollo de la cognición

The aim of this article is to contribute to spread the enactive principles to design a theory of mind - and extensively, to provide new foundations for Artificial Intelligence. This theory has lately been progressively modifying the conviction that the mind is, above all, centered on the management of concepts. The abstract mind and its symbolic support have been the pillars of the cognitive paradigm, base of the traditional Artificial Intelligence. However, results obtained from the 1990's about the embodiment and situational cognition, completed in the last years with the updating carried out by authors as the neurophysiologist Francisco Varela, have permitted to define an alternative theoretical construct towards computationalism. We attempt to show a historical tour up to date and the problems that cognitive sciences have encountered in this trip to lay the foundations of some new pillars for a theory that allows understanding the mind.El objeto de este artículo es ayudar a divulgar los principios enactivistas para el diseño de una teoría de la mente (y por extensión, para dotar de nuevos fundamentos a la Inteligencia Artificial) que en los últimos años están desmontando progresivamente la convicción de que la mente se centra, ante todo, en manejar conceptos. El pensamiento abstracto y su soporte simbólico han sido los pilares del paradigma cognitivista, base de la inteligencia artificial tradicional. Sin embargo, los resultados provenientes de finales de la década de los 90 del siglo pasado sobre corporización y situacionalidad de la cognición, complementados por la puesta al día en los últimos años del trabajo de autores como el neurofisiólogo Francisco Varela, están permitiendo definir un constructo teórico alternativo al computacionalismo. Pretendemos mostrar elrecorrido histórico hasta la actualidad y los problemas que las ciencias cognitivas se han ido encontrando en este viaje de fundamentación de unos nuevos pilares para una teoría que permita la comprensión de la mente

A Minimal Turing Test: Reciprocal Sensorimotor Contingencies for Interaction Detection

In the classical Turing test, participants are challenged to tell whether they are interacting with another human being or with a machine. The way the interaction takes place is not direct, but a distant conversation through computer screen messages. Basic forms of interaction are face-to-face and embodied, context-dependent and based on the detection of reciprocal sensorimotor contingencies. Our idea is that interaction detection requires the integration of proprioceptive and interoceptive patterns with sensorimotor patterns, within quite short time lapses, so that they appear as mutually contingent, as reciprocal. In other words, the experience of interaction takes place when sensorimotor patterns are contingent upon one’s own movements, and vice versa. I react to your movement, you react to mine. When I notice both components, I come to experience an interaction. Therefore, we designed a “minimal” Turing test to investigate how much information is required to detect these reciprocal sensorimotor contingencies. Using a new version of the perceptual crossing paradigm, we tested whether participants resorted to interaction detection to tell apart human from machine agents in repeated encounters with these agents. In two studies, we presented participants with movements of a human agent, either online or offline, and movements of a computerized oscillatory agent in three different blocks. In each block, either auditory or audiovisual feedback was provided along each trial. Analysis of participants’ explicit responses and of the implicit information subsumed in the dynamics of their series will reveal evidence that participants use the reciprocal sensorimotor contingencies within short time windows. For a machine to pass this minimal Turing test, it should be able to generate this sort of reciprocal contingencies

Aspectos destacados del informe “Sistema Universitario Español en Cifras” Datos 2017-2018

Este informe se enmarca dentro de un conjunto de actividades relacionadas con el trabajo de prospectiva que este Equipo de Dirección de la UZ ha asumido de acuerdo con las propuestas presentadas a la comunidad universitaria en nuestro programa electoral. Si queremos decidir hacia donde podemos y queremos encaminar el rumbo de la UZ, antes debemos “conocernos a nosotros mismos”1. La información que ahora presentamos tiene que ver con una selección de los últimos datos publicados por el Sistema Integrado de Información Universitaria (SIIU). Deseo que su lectura reflexiva nos permita conocer un poco mejor el mundo universitario español en el que nuestra institución está inmersa. El Sistema Integrado de Información Universitaria (SIIU) es una plataforma de recogida, procesamiento, análisis y difusión de datos del Sistema Universitario Español. Ver [http://www.educacionyfp.gob.es/servicios-al-ciudadano- mecd/estadisticas/educacion/universitaria/siiu.html] El Espacio Europeo de Educación Superior establece un nuevo sistema de ordenación de las enseñanzas universitarias oficiales e introduce procesos de aseguramiento de la calidad de las titulaciones universitarias. Tal es así, que la disposición adicional decimocuarta del Real Decreto 1393/2007, de 29 de octubre (introducida por el 861/2010, de 2 de julio) prevé la creación y desarrollo de este sistema de información. El SIIU es una herramienta primordial para la obtención de las estadísticas universitarias oficiales recogidas en el Plan Estadístico Nacional. En 2010 comenzó el desarrollo del SIIU con la participación de las comunidades autónomas, las universidades y el Ministerio, para lo cual se crea la Comisión de Estadística e Información Universitaria, pilar fundamental del sistema. El SIIU aúna recursos de todas las instituciones que configuran el Sistema Universitario Español y permite disponer de información homogénea y comparable

Solar photocatalytic degradation of parabens using UiO-66-NH2

The photocatalytic degradation of methylparaben was investigated under simulated solar light using a synthesised metal–organic framework (UiO-66-NH2). For that purpose, the pollutant was spiked in different water matrices: distilled water, water from Lima River (Northwestern Portugal), and urban wastewater. Complete removal of the methylparaben in distilled water was achieved in 1 h reaction. In natural water matrices, the photocatalytic performance decreased to 70% removal after 3 h reaction, owing to the physical–chemical properties of the water samples. The UiO-66-NH2 photocatalyst revealed high stability under the continuous mode, reaching a steady state in 5 h, from which the removal percentage was kept constant for 25 h. The photocatalytic degradation of methylparaben gave five main reaction byproducts and four short-chain carboxylic acids, identified by LC/ESI-MS and UHPLC analyses, respectively. The mechanism of degradation was investigated by using selective scavengers. Photogenerated holes and superoxide radicals were found as the main species responsible for the degradation of methylparaben. The abatement of other parabens (as ethyl- and propylparaben) was also evaluated, being the conversion influenced by the length of the alkyl side chain. The results of this study give a comprehensive sight into the effective photocatalytic remediation of parabens using UiO-66-NH2Authors acknowledge Spanish State Research Agency (PID2019- 106186RBI00/AEI/10.13039/501100011033). M. Peñas-Garzón is indebted to Spanish MECD (FPU16/00576 grant) and MICIU (EST19/ 00068). M.J.S. thanks to Project POCI-01-0145-FEDER-030674 (MicroPhotOGen, PTDC/NAN-MAT/30674/2017) funded by ERDF through COMPETE2020 - Programa Operacional Competitividade e Internacionalizaçao (POCI) – and by national funds through FCT - Fundaçao para a Ciência e a Tecnologia. We would like to thank the scientific collaboration financially supported by: Base-UIDB/50020/ 2020 and Programmatic-UIDP/50020/2020 Funding of Associate Laboratory LSRE-LCM - funded by national funds through FCT/MCTES (PIDDAC). Authors thank the Research Support Services of the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (SIdI), University of Extremadura (SAIUEx), University of Málaga (SCAI) and Universidad Complutense of Madrid (CAI