Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!apple!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!ncar!gatech!uflorida!webb.psych.ufl.edu!turner From: turner@webb.psych.ufl.edu (Carl Turner) Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy Subject: Modelling reinforcement Message-ID: <25667@uflorida.cis.ufl.EDU> Date: 30 Nov 90 15:11:48 GMT References: Sender: news@uflorida.cis.ufl.EDU Reply-To: turner@webb.psych.ufl.edu (Carl Turner) Organization: University of Florida Psychology Department Lines: 39 In article greenba@gambia.crd.ge.com (ben a green) writes: >What more is needed for an artifical person is motivation, or needs, and >an adaptive mechanism that raises the probability of the behavior that >satisfies them. This is "reinforcement". >You also need a mechanism for acquiring new needs that are based on the >old ones. So a robot that starts out inherently valuing only survival >can acquire a taste for electrical outlets ... . You've hit on the basic idea of the "Hopkins Beast" of the 1950's. This was a robot that was invented at Johns Hopkins that sort of looked like an upside-down garbage can. It would patrol the halls of whatever building it was in, and when it ran low on energy would plug itself into a wall socket and recharges its batteries. It was a nice demonstration of the idea that you get complex behavior from a simple system (the Beast) interacting with a complex environment (the halls and offices of Hopkins). Of course, it didn't "acquire" a taste for outlets but was preprogrammed to find them, else it would not have "survived" for long. >Warning! This line of thought may lead you into the dreaded world of >Behaviorism of the kind explained by B. F. Skinner in "About Behaviorism." >Ben A. Green, Jr. >greenba@crd.ge.com "Reinforcing" a machine for a behavior is the easiest thing in the world, all you have to do is increment a counter, or reset a parameter.... Behaviorist principles of behavior and reinforcement seem an appropriate domain for modelling and simulation, but computational modelling does not seem to have caught on there. Perhaps someone could explain why. Carl Turner turner@webb.psych.ufl.edu