Social Cognition in Silica - A ‘Theory of Mind’ for Socially Aware Artificial Minds

Michael Harré

2014

Abstract

Each of us has an incredibly large repertoire of behaviours from which to select from at any given time, and as our behavioural complexity grows so too does the possibility that we will misunderstand each other’s actions. However, we have evolved a cognitive mechanism that allows us to understand another person’s psychological space: their motivations, constraints, plans, goals and emotional state and it is called our ‘Theory of Mind’. This capability allows us to understand the choices another person might make on the basis that the other person has their own ‘internal world’ that influences their choices in the same way as our own internal world influences our choices. Arguably, this is one of the most significant cognitive developments in human evolutionary history, along with our ability for long term adaptation to familiar situations and our ability to reason dynamically in completely novel situations. So the question arises: Can we implement the rudimentary foundations of a human-like Theory of Mind in an artificial mind such that it can dynamically adapt to the likely decisions of another mind (artificial or biological) by holding an internal representation of that other mind? This article argues that this is possible and that we already have much of the necessary theoretical foundations in order to begin the development process.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Harré M. (2014). Social Cognition in Silica - A ‘Theory of Mind’ for Socially Aware Artificial Minds . In Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Agents and Artificial Intelligence - Volume 1: ICAART, ISBN 978-989-758-015-4, pages 657-662. DOI: 10.5220/0004917606570662

in Bibtex Style

@conference{icaart14,
author={Michael Harré},
title={Social Cognition in Silica - A ‘Theory of Mind’ for Socially Aware Artificial Minds},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Agents and Artificial Intelligence - Volume 1: ICAART,},
year={2014},
pages={657-662},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0004917606570662},
isbn={978-989-758-015-4},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF
JO - Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Agents and Artificial Intelligence - Volume 1: ICAART,
TI - Social Cognition in Silica - A ‘Theory of Mind’ for Socially Aware Artificial Minds
SN - 978-989-758-015-4
AU - Harré M.
PY - 2014
SP - 657
EP - 662
DO - 10.5220/0004917606570662