Massively Multi-Author Hybrid Arti cial Intelligence

217 Pages·2014·4.39 MB·English

Massively Multi-Author Hybrid Arti(cid:28)cial
Intelligence
Ois(cid:237)n Mac Fheara(cid:237), B.Sc. (Hons)
A Dissertation submitted in ful(cid:28)lment of the requirements for the award of
Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)
to the
Dublin City University
School of Computing
Supervisors:
Mark Humphrys
Ray Walshe
September 2014
Declaration
I hereby certify that this material, which I now submit for assessment on the pro-
gramme of study leading to the award of Doctor of Philosophy is entirely my own
work, that I have exercised reasonable care to ensure that the work is original, and
does not to the best of my knowledge breach any law of copyright, and has not been
taken from the work of others save and to the extent that such work has been cited
and acknowledged within the text of my work.
Signed: ID No.:
Ois(cid:237)n Mac Fheara(cid:237)
Date:
Thesis title: Massively Multi-Author Hybrid Arti(cid:28)cial In-
telligence
Author: Ois(cid:237)n Mac Fheara(cid:237)
Abstract:
Biological intelligences often consist of many di(cid:27)erent, complex systems working
together, rather than a single mechanism capable of solving every problem. It may
be that arti(cid:28)cial intelligence requires a composition of multiple, diverse systems;
perhaps more than any one individual or one research group can create or even
understand.
Thisdissertationpresentsanarchitectureforhostingande(cid:30)cientlyrunninguser-
submitted programs ((cid:16)minds(cid:17)) intended to solve particular problems ((cid:16)worlds(cid:17)), and
to facilitate the assembly of these problem-solving minds into larger scale systems
of (cid:16)hybrid(cid:17) minds which query an existing set of minds (which we call (cid:16)subminds(cid:17))
for their suggested actions. These subminds may be hosted on the same machine or
remotely,acrosstheInternet. Theymayhavebeenwrittenbymanydi(cid:27)erentauthors,
with each program intended either as a complete solution to the problem, or with
an eye toward its re-use in a modular fashion. Even if a program is written and
intended as a complete, independent solution to the problem, that need not preclude
itsinclusioninalarger,hierarchicalhybridprogram. Inotherwords,thearchitecture
presented forms a platform for building hybrid arti(cid:28)cial intelligence systems using
other people’s code.
The dissertation also presents and evaluates a method for automatically combin-
ing minds (which may have been written by di(cid:27)erent authors) for use in a hybrid
mind, by performing a statistical analysis of the observed performance of each mind
program in a collection of minds submitted by third parties competing to solve two
di(cid:27)erent types of problem.
2

Acknowledgements
When embarking upon the journey of a doctoral research plan, there are several
ways to go about it. One approach is to run headlong into the task and to identify
and attack the research questions with singular focus and steely determination. An
alternative option is to take the scenic route, meandering about and engaging in
many sidequests along the way. Having decidedly followed the latter path, I have
manypeopleofwhomtobethankful,andaccordinglymorenamestobothremember
and forget.
A great number of colleagues and friends provided invaluable help by review-
ing drafts and by o(cid:27)ering advice in many, many areas where my knowledge was
lacking. Among them are Karthika Raghavan, Cr(cid:237)ost(cid:243)ir Mac CÆrthaigh, SeÆn Mac
an Bhaird, Graham Healy, Mark Hughes, Lijuan Zhou, Marija Bezbradica, Irina
Roznovat,DeclanMcMullen,CathalGurrin,AakashAhmad,PooyanJamshidi,Kos-
ala Yapa Bandara, Paul Clarke, Michael Dever, Jie Shi and Alan Smeaton. I am
especially indebted to Martin Crane, Na Li and Yun Jin for guidance pertaining to
statistics, andtoCiarÆnO’Leary, BrianMonksandJohnPendleburyforbrainstorm-
ing with me at various stages of the project.
The faculty and sta(cid:27) at DCU provided support in so many forms (cid:21) Anne-Marie
Caherty and Jonny Hobson in particular went out of their way to advise and assist
regarding administrative and (cid:28)nancial issues, such as forgetting to (cid:28)ll out forms or
running out of money. SØamus Keating helped (cid:28)x my bicycle after (cid:28)nishing his
security shift on at least three occasions (cid:21) thank you!
Time and again, Gary Conway helped set up and administer servers that were
critical to achieving what I set out to do. Jim Doyle and Sean Haran also went
above and beyond the call of duty, even at the eleventh hour when my hard drive
(predictably) failed.
4
Emer N(cid:237) BhrÆdaigh and MairØad Nic Giolla Mhich(cid:237)l gave excellent advice on
practical matters towards the end of the writing process.
I am grateful to IRCSET for investing quite a lot of money to fund me for much
of the way.
A large portion of thanks is also due to my supervisors Mark Humphrys and Ray
Walshe for their advice and support, helpfully o(cid:27)ered at di(cid:27)erent times so as to be
evenly covered.
To my mother, Br(cid:237)d, for several decades (and counting) of guidance, lifts and
minding the kids when we were stuck.
And(cid:28)nally, myundyinggratitudetoYunqingZhengforbeingherwonderfulself,
and to Aela and Turloch for being a grand pair of kids whom I love very dearly.
5

Contents
1 Introduction 15
1.1 Motivation (cid:21) Decentralising A.I. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
1.2 Hybrid arti(cid:28)cial intelligence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
1.3 The World-Wide Mind . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
1.4 Research questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
1.5 Contributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
1.6 Dissertation structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
1.6.1 List of chapters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
1.6.2 Roadmap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
2 Terminology 20
2.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
2.2 Worlds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
2.3 States . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
2.4 Actions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
2.5 Scores . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
2.6 Goals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
2.7 Minds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
2.8 The action-selection loop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
2.9 Hybrid minds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
2.10 Massively multi-author hybrid arti(cid:28)cial intelligence . . . . . . . . . . 27
2.11 Limitations of this framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
2.12 Research gap: Automated hybrid building . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
2.13 Research aims . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
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3 Related Work 31
3.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
3.2 Modular intelligence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
3.3 Cognitive architectures and distributed minds . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
3.3.1 The Society of Mind . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
3.3.2 CogA(cid:27) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
3.3.3 Uni(cid:28)ed Theories of Cognition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
3.3.4 The Soar architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
3.3.5 CLARION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
3.3.6 Global workspace theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
3.3.7 On knowledge representation and building interfaces . . . . . 37
3.4 Other work on building modular intelligent systems . . . . . . . . . . 38
3.4.1 Hybrid minds created by O’Leary et al . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
3.4.2 Behaviour-based A.I. and the subsumption architecture . . . 40
3.4.3 Behavior-oriented design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
3.4.4 Hierarchical Q-learning. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
3.4.5 W-learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
3.4.6 Constructionist Design Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
3.4.7 Blackboard systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
3.5 Competition and collaboration in mind-building . . . . . . . . . . . 43
3.5.1 Yet Another Robot Platform (YARP) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
3.5.2 Robot Operating System (ROS) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
3.6 Cloud computing and the semantic web . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
3.7 Fast communication in networked computer games . . . . . . . . . . 46
3.7.1 Packet transmission protocols . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
3.8 Techniques for synchronising state over unreliable channels . . . . . . 47
3.8.1 Latency and responsiveness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
3.8.2 Hiding the e(cid:27)ects of latency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
3.8.3 Limitations of latency-hiding techniques . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
3.9 Statistical methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
3.10 Conclusion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
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4 Previous Work: the World-Wide Mind, version 1.0 52
4.1 The World-Wide Mind . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
4.2 Communication model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
4.3 Architecture of the World-Wide Mind v1.0 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
4.3.1 Software architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
4.4 Interaction of mind and world . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
4.5 Society of Mind Markup Language (SOML) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
4.6 Client interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
4.7 Software API for writing minds and worlds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
4.8 The W2M 1.0 service platform . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
4.8.1 Message encoding, transmission and decoding . . . . . . . . . 59
4.9 Limitations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
4.9.1 Minds and worlds as web services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
4.10 Conclusion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
5 W2M 2.0: An architecture to enable massively multi-author hybrid
intelligence 64
5.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
5.2 Purpose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
5.3 Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
5.4 Architecture of the World-Wide Mind 2.0 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
5.4.1 The run logger . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
5.4.1.1 The run logger XML log . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
5.4.2 The user interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
5.4.3 The W2MServer daemon. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
5.5 Uploading and testing worlds and minds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
5.5.1 Uploading worlds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
5.5.2 Uploading minds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
5.5.3 Running and testing minds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
5.6 Improvements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
5.6.1 Moving from a peer-to-peer to a more centralised (cid:16)islands(cid:17) ar-
chitecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
9