Let’s say “agent-like behavior” is “taking actions that are more-likely-than-chance to create an a-priori-specifiable consequence” (this definition includes bacteria).
Then I’d say this requires “agent-like processes”, involving (at least) all 4 of: (1) having access to some information about the world (at least the local environment), including in particular (2) how one’s actions affect the world. This information can come either baked into the design (bacteria, giant lookup table), and/or from previous experience (RL), and/or via reasoning from input data. It also needs (3) an ability to use this information to choose actions that are likelier-than-chance to achieve the consequence in question (again, the outcome of this search process could be baked into the design like bacteria, or it could be calculated on-the-fly like human foresight), and of course (4) a tendency to actually execute those actions in question.
I feel like this is almost trivial, like I’m just restating the same thing in two different ways… I mean, if there’s no mutual information between the agent and the world, its actions can only be effective only insofar as the exact same action would be effective when executed in a random location of a random universe. (Does contracting your own muscle count as “accomplishing something without any world knowledge”?)
Anyway, where I’m really skeptical here is in the term “architecture”. “Architecture” in everyday usage usually implies software properties that are obvious parts of how a program is built, and probably put in on purpose. (Is there a more specific definition of “architecture” you had in mind?) I’m pretty doubtful that the ingredients 1-4 have to be part of the “architecture” in that sense. For example, I’ve been thinking a lot about self-supervised learning algorithms, which have ingredient (1) by design and have (3) sorta incidentally. The other two ingredients (2) and (4) are definitely not part of the “architecture” (in the sense above). But I’ve argued that they can both occur as unintended side-effects of its operation: See here, and also here for more details about (2). And thus I argue at that first link that this system can have agent-like behavior.
(And what’s the “architecture” of a bacteria anyway? Not a rhetorical question.)
Sorry if this is all incorrect and/or not in the spirit of your question.
No, I would try to rule out stars based on “a-priori-specifiable consequence”—saying that “stars shine” would be painting a target around the arrow, i.e. reasoning about what the system would actually do and then saying that the system is going to do that. For example, expecting bacteria to take actions that maximize inclusive genetic fitness would certainly qualify as “a priori specifiable”. The other part is “more likely than chance”, which I suppose entails a range of possible actions/behaviors, with different actions/behaviors invoked in different possible universes, but leading to the same consequence regardless. (You can see how every step I make towards being specific here is also a step towards making my “theorem” completely trivial, X=X.)
Let’s say “agent-like behavior” is “taking actions that are more-likely-than-chance to create an a-priori-specifiable consequence” (this definition includes bacteria).
Then I’d say this requires “agent-like processes”, involving (at least) all 4 of: (1) having access to some information about the world (at least the local environment), including in particular (2) how one’s actions affect the world. This information can come either baked into the design (bacteria, giant lookup table), and/or from previous experience (RL), and/or via reasoning from input data. It also needs (3) an ability to use this information to choose actions that are likelier-than-chance to achieve the consequence in question (again, the outcome of this search process could be baked into the design like bacteria, or it could be calculated on-the-fly like human foresight), and of course (4) a tendency to actually execute those actions in question.
I feel like this is almost trivial, like I’m just restating the same thing in two different ways… I mean, if there’s no mutual information between the agent and the world, its actions can only be effective only insofar as the exact same action would be effective when executed in a random location of a random universe. (Does contracting your own muscle count as “accomplishing something without any world knowledge”?)
Anyway, where I’m really skeptical here is in the term “architecture”. “Architecture” in everyday usage usually implies software properties that are obvious parts of how a program is built, and probably put in on purpose. (Is there a more specific definition of “architecture” you had in mind?) I’m pretty doubtful that the ingredients 1-4 have to be part of the “architecture” in that sense. For example, I’ve been thinking a lot about self-supervised learning algorithms, which have ingredient (1) by design and have (3) sorta incidentally. The other two ingredients (2) and (4) are definitely not part of the “architecture” (in the sense above). But I’ve argued that they can both occur as unintended side-effects of its operation: See here, and also here for more details about (2). And thus I argue at that first link that this system can have agent-like behavior.
(And what’s the “architecture” of a bacteria anyway? Not a rhetorical question.)
Sorry if this is all incorrect and/or not in the spirit of your question.
Does your definition of agentic behavior include the behavior of a star?
No, I would try to rule out stars based on “a-priori-specifiable consequence”—saying that “stars shine” would be painting a target around the arrow, i.e. reasoning about what the system would actually do and then saying that the system is going to do that. For example, expecting bacteria to take actions that maximize inclusive genetic fitness would certainly qualify as “a priori specifiable”. The other part is “more likely than chance”, which I suppose entails a range of possible actions/behaviors, with different actions/behaviors invoked in different possible universes, but leading to the same consequence regardless. (You can see how every step I make towards being specific here is also a step towards making my “theorem” completely trivial, X=X.)