The geometry of desire

Luis Antunes, Davide Nunes, Helder Coelho

Abstract: In the BDI paradigm, much attention was devoted to beliefs, intentions, choice and commitment, whereas desire has traditionally been seen as given. However, desire is the key connection to the agents' creator, and the ultimate source of behaviour. Desires are allowed to be incoherent, irrational, or at least a-rational. Agent environments establish a motivational context for agents to act upon. Agent societies are never truly autonomous. We argue that pre-designed utility-based behaviour search strategies not only hinder the adaptability of an agent but also prevent the emergence of novel social behaviour. In this paper, we propose a new model of desire acquisition and evolution. Agents continuously adapt their desires by means of both their intrinsic motivations, as well as a mimetic mechanism inspired in Rene' Girard's theory. Agents acquire new goals not through fitness or novelty but out of mechanisms such as envy, imitation and competition. To achieve their goals, agents have to sometimes discard them and just overcome their neighbours.