I’d draw more of a connection between embedded agency and bounded optimality or the philosophical superproject of “naturalizing” various concepts (e.g., naturalized epistemology).
Our old name for embedded agency was “naturalized agency”; we switched because we kept finding that CS people wanted to know what we meant by “naturalized”, and we’d always say “embedded”, so...
“Embodiment” is less relevant because it’s about, well, bodies. Embedded agency just says that the agent is embedded in its environment in some fashion; it doesn’t say that the agent has a robot body, in spite of the cute pictures of robots Abram drew above. An AI system with no “body” it can directly manipulate or sense will still be physically implemented on computing hardware, and that on its own can raise all the issues above.
I’d draw more of a connection between embedded agency and bounded optimality or the philosophical superproject of “naturalizing” various concepts (e.g., naturalized epistemology).
Our old name for embedded agency was “naturalized agency”; we switched because we kept finding that CS people wanted to know what we meant by “naturalized”, and we’d always say “embedded”, so...
“Embodiment” is less relevant because it’s about, well, bodies. Embedded agency just says that the agent is embedded in its environment in some fashion; it doesn’t say that the agent has a robot body, in spite of the cute pictures of robots Abram drew above. An AI system with no “body” it can directly manipulate or sense will still be physically implemented on computing hardware, and that on its own can raise all the issues above.