Have you read Minsky’s _Society of Mind_? It is an AI-flavored psychological model of subagents that draws heavily on psychotherapeutic ideas. It seems quite similar in flavor to what you propose here. It inspired generations of students at the MIT AI Lab (although attempts to code it never worked out).
I looked at the beginning of it a bit before writing this post, but at least the beginning of it gave the impression that its subagents were very low-level (IIRC, it started with an example of building a tower of blocks, or taking some similar physical action, using many different subagents) and overall it had a strong vibe of 80′s AI, so then it didn’t feel like the most useful thing to be reading.
It inspired generations of students at the MIT AI Lab (although attempts to code it never worked out).
Do you happen to recall where you got that information? I’ve wondered occasionally what later became of Minsky’s approach; it’s intuitively pretty compelling. I’d love to find a source of info on follow-up work.
Here’s one later discussion I found, from 2003, by Push Singh at MIT’s Media Lab. It attempts to summarize the implementable parts of the book, and talks about its history and more recent developments.
A couple of interesting things:
Unlike David’s source, it says that ‘Despite the great popularity of the book The Society of Mind, there have been few attempts to implement very much of the theory.’
It says that Minsky’s, The Emotion Machine, forthcoming at the time, is in part a sequel to SoM. I haven’t read it, so can’t vouch for the accuracy of that statement.
I’ve read that book. One thing I think it’s missing, if I’m remembering it correctly, is any interplay between ‘bottom-up’ and ‘top-down’ sub-agents. That seems to be a key dynamic à la perceptual control theory.
Have you read Minsky’s _Society of Mind_? It is an AI-flavored psychological model of subagents that draws heavily on psychotherapeutic ideas. It seems quite similar in flavor to what you propose here. It inspired generations of students at the MIT AI Lab (although attempts to code it never worked out).
I looked at the beginning of it a bit before writing this post, but at least the beginning of it gave the impression that its subagents were very low-level (IIRC, it started with an example of building a tower of blocks, or taking some similar physical action, using many different subagents) and overall it had a strong vibe of 80′s AI, so then it didn’t feel like the most useful thing to be reading.
Do you happen to recall where you got that information? I’ve wondered occasionally what later became of Minsky’s approach; it’s intuitively pretty compelling. I’d love to find a source of info on follow-up work.
Here’s one later discussion I found, from 2003, by Push Singh at MIT’s Media Lab. It attempts to summarize the implementable parts of the book, and talks about its history and more recent developments.
A couple of interesting things:
Unlike David’s source, it says that ‘Despite the great popularity of the book The Society of Mind, there have been few attempts to implement very much of the theory.’
It says that Minsky’s, The Emotion Machine, forthcoming at the time, is in part a sequel to SoM. I haven’t read it, so can’t vouch for the accuracy of that statement.
I’ve read that book. One thing I think it’s missing, if I’m remembering it correctly, is any interplay between ‘bottom-up’ and ‘top-down’ sub-agents. That seems to be a key dynamic à la perceptual control theory.