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Humans use signs, e.g., sentences in a spoken language, for communication and thought. Hence, symbol systems like language are crucial for our communication with other agents and adaptation to our real-world environment. The symbol systems…
Symbol grounding (Harnad, 1990) describes how symbols such as words acquire their meanings by connecting to real-world sensorimotor experiences. Recent work has shown preliminary evidence that grounding may emerge in (vision-)language…
We propose that symbols are first and foremost external communication tools used between intelligent agents that allow knowledge to be transferred in a more efficient and effective manner than having to experience the world directly. But,…
This paper synthesizes a series of formal proofs to construct a unified theory on the logical limits of the Symbol Grounding Problem. We distinguish between internal meaning (sense), which formal systems can possess via axioms, and external…
The ability to use symbols is the pinnacle of human intelligence, but has yet to be fully replicated in machines. Here we argue that the path towards symbolically fluent artificial intelligence (AI) begins with a reinterpretation of what…
The symbol grounding problem asks how tokens like cat can be about cats, as opposed to mere shapes manipulated in a calculus. We recast grounding from a binary judgment into an audit across desiderata, each indexed by an evaluation tuple…
Despite advances in embodied AI, agent reasoning systems still struggle to capture the fundamental conceptual structures that humans naturally use to understand and interact with their environment. To address this, we propose a novel…
In multi-agent systems, the agents may have goals that depend on a social, shared interpretation about the facts occurring in the system. These are the so-called social goals. Artificial institutions provide such a social interpretation by…
How can the semantic interpretation of a formal symbol system be made intrinsic to the system, rather than just parasitic on the meanings in our heads? How can the meanings of the meaningless symbol tokens, manipulated solely on the basis…
Humans interact with the environment using a combination of perception - transforming sensory inputs from their environment into symbols, and cognition - mapping symbols to knowledge about the environment for supporting abstraction,…
We are increasingly surrounded by artificially intelligent technology that takes decisions and executes actions on our behalf. This creates a pressing need for general means to communicate with, instruct and guide artificial agents, with…
Situationally-aware artificial agents operating with competence in natural environments face several challenges: spatial awareness, object affordance detection, dynamic changes and unpredictability. A critical challenge is the agent's…
We argue that an explainable artificial intelligence must possess a rationale for its decisions, be able to infer the purpose of observed behaviour, and be able to explain its decisions in the context of what its audience understands and…
Robots that interact with humans in a physical space or application need to think about the person's posture, which typically comes from visual sensors like cameras and infra-red. Artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms use…
Interactions with large language models have led to the suggestion that these models may soon be conscious. From the perspective of neuroscience, this position is difficult to defend. For one, the inputs to large language models lack the…
Contemporary neural networks still fall short of human-level generalization, which extends far beyond our direct experiences. In this paper, we argue that the underlying cause for this shortcoming is their inability to dynamically and…
This paper provides a definitive, unifying framework for the Symbol Grounding Problem (SGP) by reformulating it within Algorithmic Information Theory (AIT). We demonstrate that the grounding of meaning is a process fundamentally constrained…
I am a person and so are you. Philosophically we sometimes grant personhood to non-human animals, and entities such as sovereign states or corporations can legally be considered persons. But when, if ever, should we ascribe personhood to AI…
The capacity to generate meaningful symbols and effectively employ them for advanced cognitive processes, such as communication, reasoning, and planning, constitutes a fundamental and distinctive aspect of human intelligence. Existing deep…
The world runs on communicated sequences of symbols, e.g. numerals. Examining both engineered and natural communications networks reveals an unsuspected order that depends on contact with an unpredictable entity. This order has three roots.…