Live and Learn, Ask and Tell: Agents over Tasks

Don Perlis, Clifford Bakalian, Justin Brody, Timothy Clausner, Matthew D. Goldberg, Adam Hamlin, Vincent Hsiao, Darsana P. Josyula, Chris Maxey, Seth Rabin, David Sekora, Jared Shamwell, Jesse Silverberg

Abstract: Steven Spielberg’s “A.I.” tells the story of two artificial agents: David and Teddy. While David resembles a human child, his companion Teddy is much simpler. Its behavior, however, still suggests a crucial mix of capabilities that stretch the state of the art in AI today. We argue that, unlike most contemporary AI, Teddy qualifies as a bona fide agent, and that implementing such a system would represent a valuable advance in our understanding of agency. We then describe a project to integrate our existing work to create a simple agent with Teddy-like capabilities.