Abstract
Understanding others’ intentions and representing them as being able to understand intentions are relevant factors in cooperation, as is the ability to represent shared goals and coordinated action plans (joint intentions). To endow artificial systems with cooperative functionality, they need to be enabled to adopt the goals of another individual and act together with the other to achieve these goals. Such systems may be embodied as robotic agents or as humanoid agents projected in virtual reality (“embodied cooperative systems”). A central question is how the processes involved interact and how their interplay can be modeled. For example, inter-agent cooperation relies very much on common ground, i.e. the mutually shared knowledge of the interlocutors. Nonverbal behaviors such as gaze and gestures are important means of coordinating attention between interlocutors (joint attention) in the pursuit of goals. In the context of cooperative settings, the view that humans are users of a certain “tool” has shifted to that of a “partnership” with artificial agents, insofar they can be considered as being able to take initiative as autonomous entities. This chapter will outline these ideas taking the virtual humanoid agent “Max” as an example.
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Notes
- 1.
The aspect of “mutual benefit” often included in definitions of cooperation is not taken up here because artificial systems do not seem to have genuine interests that could benefit from cooperation; see (Stephan et al. 2008).
- 2.
- 3.
Dialogue translated from German to English.
- 4.
On how to configure an artificial agent so as to enable him to adopt a first-person perspective see Wachsmuth (2008).
- 5.
For further detail, the formal definition of joint attention, and the specification of epistemic actions that lead to the respective beliefs and goals see Pfeiffer-Leßmann and Wachsmuth (2009).
- 6.
Note that, even when we have attempted to build a coherent comprehensive system, not all aspects described in this article have been integrated in one system, that is, different versions of “Max” were used to explore the above ideas in implemented systems.
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Acknowledgments
The research reported here draws on the contributions by the members of Bielefeld University’s artificial intelligence group which is hereby gratefully acknowledged. Thanks also to Catrin Misselhorn and an anonymous referee for helpful comments to improve the text. Over many years this research has been supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) in the Collaborative Research Centers 360 (Situated Artificial Communicators) and 673 (Alignment in Communication), the Excellence Cluster 277 CITEC (Cognitive Interaction Technology), and the Heinz Nixdorf MuseumsForum (HNF).
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Wachsmuth, I. (2015). Embodied Cooperative Systems: From Tool to Partnership. In: Misselhorn, C. (eds) Collective Agency and Cooperation in Natural and Artificial Systems. Philosophical Studies Series, vol 122. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-15515-9_4
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