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Research Report AI-1991-01
Artificial Intelligence Programs
The University of Georgia
Athens, Georgia 30602
Available by ftp from
aisun1.ai.uga.edu
(128.192.12.9)
Series editor:
Michael Covington
mcovingt@aisun1.ai.uga.edu
Research Report AI-1991-01
SALMON: a TEMPERAMENTAL Program that Learns
Gregg H. Rosenberg
Artificial Intelligence Programs
The University of Georgia
Athens, Georgia 30602 U.S.A.
1
GREGG H. ROSENBERG
SALMON, a TEMPERAMENTAL Program That Learns
A new approach to machine learning is introduced that utilizes
semantic information in a connectionist network. The approach is
implemented in a program that learns to act appropriately in the
dynamic environment of a children's game of tag. The model is
interesting in several respects including the ability to begin with
no connections and then make and break them according to its
experience, the ability to adjust the weights on its connections and
the ability to interact with its environment.
2
1.0 Introduction
This thesis introduces a new approach to machine learning that
uses aspects of semantic and connectionist systems. The name of the
programming technique is TEMPERAMENTAL programming. TEMPERAMENTAL
stands for The Effective Management of Process Evolution and Response
in an Associative Memory Emulating a Neural Type Action Language. The
algorithm has been implemented successfully as a program named SALMON
(Semantic Action Learner Modeled On Neurons) that learned an
appropriate strategy for a simulated game of tag from watching the
other participants. The main features of interest in a TEMPERAMENTAL
program are:
1) The system is a self-organizing learner which uses
experience in a dynamic environment to learn how to react
appropriately in it.
2) The learner begins with only unconnected semantic nodes then
makes and breaks connections between them based on what occurs
in the environment.
3) The learner adjusts the weights of connections to conform to
its experiences in the environment.
4) Both the nodes and connections have semantic meaning, but
the information passed through the connections is numerical <20>
la the connectionist paradigm.
5) Despite its semantics, the algorithm is potentially as
massively parallel as other connectionist schemes.
Sections two and three describe TEMPERAMENTAL programming.
Section two contains information concerning the components of a
TEMPERAMENTAL system, and how TEMPERAMENTAL programs learn. Section
three details how activation is spread in a TEMPERAMENTAL network and
how the results are interpreted. Sections four through six deal with
different aspects of the implementation, section seven analyzes the
results obtained from the implementation, and section eight is a
general discussion of issues raised by TEMPERAMENTAL programming and
possible directions for future work.
2.0 TEMPERAMENTAL Programming
TEMPERAMENTAL programming is a hybrid scheme which uses the
interpretive power of semantics and the pattern recognition and
parallelism of connectionist strategies to learn about a dynamic
environment. It connects nodes with semantic meaning using links that
also have semantic meaning, but weights the links numerically and has
them activate the nodes in parallel. Once trained, the activation and
the semantics cooperate by combining their knowledge to decide upon
an action given the current circumstances. The key ideas taken from
1
2
connectionism are parallelism and communication through numeric
activation rather than semantic message passing. The key ideas taken
from semantics are consistent interpretation of symbols and
procedural interaction with an environment.
2.1 Node Types
There are four types of nodes in a TEMPERAMENTAL system:
objects, dynamic attributes, actions and action attributes.
1) Objects each object in the environment is assigned a node
with a unique label. Objects have a full repertoire of
connectionist behaviors, these being the reception,
accumulation, and passing along of activation energy.
2) Dynamic Attributes Each environment has a set of
attributes, like a particular location, that an object may or
may not possess. These are called dynamic attributes and a node
with a unique label is assigned to each attribute. Dynamic
attributes act as conduits for activation from objects to other
nodes but do not accumulate activation themselves.
3) Actions An action is a change to an attribute or the value
of an attribute of one or more objects. Each action in the
environment is given a node with a unique label. Like objects,
action nodes have the full repertoire of connectionist
behaviors including reception, accumulation and transference of
activation. In addition, action nodes have a procedure and a
function associated with them. The function accepts an object
and determines if the action is enabled with respect to that
object. The procedure contains the semantic instructions for
performing the action when the node is activated.
4) Action Attributes Many actions can be performed in more
than one way. For instance, a player in a game of tag must
decide not only to flee, but also in which direction to flee.
The direction can be thought of as an attribute of the action.
One node with a unique label is assigned to each possible
attribute of each action defined. The attribute is explicitly
bound to the action it is responsible for helping to perform.
One attribute may belong to many actions. The action attributes
accumulate activation but do not transfer it.
2.2 Connection Types
Connectionist networks normally define their connections by the
type of activation that they convey. Thus the connections are either
inhibitory or excitory. Semantic systems usually define their
connections by the type of relationship that they represent. Thus, we
have IS-A links, HAVE links, MEMBER links and so forth. TEMPERAMENTAL
programs do both. Each connection is assigned a semantic meaning used
in making the connection and in adjusting its weights. It is also
assigned a role in spreading activation that defines it as either a
companion, excitory, or enemy connection. Finally, each connection is
3
assigned a directionality. Being a companion or an enemy connection
in a TEMPERAMENTAL system is not the same thing as being inhibitory
or excitory in a normal connectionist network. Companion connections
between two nodes represent, with a certain strength, the possibility
that the two nodes will co-activate. Enemy connections represent the
possibility, with a certain strength, that two nodes will not co-
activate. Therefore, whether a connection passes along an inhibitory
or an excitory signal depends not only on what kind of connection it
is, but also on what kind of activation the node received. If a node
receives an excitory signal then it would send an excitory signal
along its companion connections. But if the signal received by the
node was inhibitory, then it would send inhibitory signals along its
companion connections.
In general we can think of the activation received by a node as
containing a message. Excitory activations contain the message that,
"You are my friend." Inhibitory activations contain the message that,
"You are my enemy." The goal is not to pass the form of the message
along intact, but rather the content. Therefore, we can follow these
old proverbs:
"The friend of my friend is my friend."
"The enemy of my friend is my enemy."
"The friend of my enemy is my enemy."
"The enemy of my enemy is my friend."
After running experiments with the system I found that it was
absolutely necessary for there to be strictly excitory connections as
well as companion connections. The justification can be understood by
imagining this situation: Let's say that a friend of yours has the
peculiar habit of walking backwards every once in a while. After he
walks backwards he always walks forwards again. Now, of course you
will get an expectation that he will walk backwards from seeing him
walk backwards, but from seeing him walk forwards again you also will
get a negative expectation (called an exclusive connection in
TEMPERAMENTAL programming) that he will walk backwards (these
connections are talked about soon). Further, he always walks forwards
after he walks backwards so you get a very strong positive
expectation that this will be the sequence of events. Now, since he
does not walk backwards very often, your negative expectation for his
walking backwards grows very strong, stronger than your positive
expectation that he will walk backwards. When wondering whether your
friend will walk forwards or backwards, which will you say?
Intuitively, you will say that he will walk forwards. But imagine
that the expectation for the sequencing is a companion connection as
outlined above. There is a very strong negative expectation that gets
fed to walking backwards, and walking backwards has a very strong
companion connection to walking forwards through sequencing. This
companion connection is a path that will convey this strong negative
expectation about walking backwards to walking forward. Because the
weight of the sequence connection is so strong the negative energy is
not diminished very much as it moves along the path, and it may even
4
be enough to cause you to have more belief that he will walk
backwards than you do that he will walk forward.
That is all wrong! Just because you don't believe something
will happen doesn't mean that you also believe what usually follows
it won't happen. You remain neutral regarding what will follow it. If
the preceding action A occurs, then it raises your expectation that
the following action B will occur, but the unlikelihood of A merely
means that B will have to get activation from some other source if it
is to compete with your other expectations. Therefore, your
sequencing expectations are not companion but strictly excitory.
Another way of putting it is to remember that companion connections
represent co-activation, but sequences are serial activations, not
co-activations. Therefore, sequence expectations are not companions.
In the following discussion the terms "giver node" and "giving
node" refer to the node which passes activation along in the
connection. The terms "receiver node" and "receiving node" refer to
the node which acquires activation from the connection. In two-way
connections both nodes are givers and also receivers.
1) Expectation Connections Expectation connections are formed
between objects and the actions that they perform. The heuristic is,
if an object is performing an action then establish an expectation
connection between the object and the action. Expectation connections
are two-way and companion.
2) Exclusive Connections Of course, sometimes attributes an
object possesses make it less likely to perform an action. Exclusive
connections try to capture these kinds of relationships. Formation of
exclusive connections is motivated by an object changing the action
it is performing. When an object stops performing an action, make an
exclusive connection between each attribute the object had at the
moment it stopped and the action no longer being performed. Also make
a connection between the object and the action. The idea is that the
attribute responsible will eventually emerge as the connection is re-
enforced through the attribute's continual presence when the action
is not being performed and absence when it is.
3) Focus Connections The idea of a focus is currently ill
defined. Many actions seem to have them, though. If one object is
pursuing another, the focus of the action is the object being
pursued. However, a focus relation is not symmetric. A zebra may flee
a lion even though the lion is not concerned with the zebra at all;
thus the lion is the focus of the zebra's action but the zebra is not
the focus of the lion's action. Vaguely, we can think of the focus of
an action as being the object which motivates it. The focus object of
giving flowers is a loved one, the focus object of driving to work is
the place of employment, etc.
In the performance of any action with a focus there are at
least three nodes involved, the performer, the focus object and the
action. The TEMPERAMENTAL system makes a focus connection between the
performer and the focus object. The connection is two-way companion.
5
The TEMPERAMENTAL system also makes a connection from the action to
the focus object. The connection is two-way companion.
One reason the system makes separate connections for the action
and the performer is because it is naive. It does not know if this
relationship holds because of the focus object's relationship to the
performer or because of some special relationship to the action, or
both. For instance, the net must be able to capture fixations one
object might have for another without contaminating the connection
for the action in general. By separating the focus connections we are
able to maintain a strong relationship between the performer and the
focus object without the focus object becoming a fixation of the
action also.
Another reason for making the connections separately is to
reduce the number of connections the system has to make. The number
of connections that need to be made are roughly exponential to the
number of nodes involved in the connection. Full connectivity between
four objects and five actions in triplet form would require 80
(4 5 4) connections; however, in pairs of doubles the same set of
associations is represented with only 36 connections (4 4) + (5 4).
Finally, representation as pairs of doublets can be defended on the
grounds of ineffectiveness. More complicated connections would work
too well. A learner that remembered in triplets, or quadruplets, or
whatever is necessary would always know exactly what to expect. Why
even have a scene represented by sets of connections? Why not have
the entire scene captured in one big beautiful connection? The reason
is that no learner ever actually does learn that well. The doublets
crystallize the correct expectation or response much of the time, but
we cannot be sure they will do so.
4) Using Connections Many actions require tools or use
objects in some other way. The TEMPERAMENTAL system should make
connections to these tools. Therefore, a two-way companion connection
is made between the object performing the action and the tool being
used. Also, the system makes a using connection from the action being
performed to the object being used. The connection is two-way. The
connection from the user object to the used object, and the
connection from the action to the used object are separated for the
same reasons given for separating the focus connections.
5) Sequence Connections If an object is performing an action
A one moment and an action B the next, then form a sequence
connection from action A to action B. The sequence connection is one-
way and strictly excitory from A to B.
6) Dependency Connections Action attributes depend on the
attributes of the objects involved. Therefore, in a situation where
object O1 is performing action A1, using O2 with focus O3, make
dependency connections between A1's current attribute and the
attributes of O1, O2 and O3. The dependency connections are from
dynamic attributes to action attributes, and the connection-making
strategy is naive. For each object involved, make a dependency
6
connection from each attribute of the object to each current
attribute of the action.
7) Cooperative Connections Each action has a function
attached to it that decides if any given object is able to perform an
action. Cooperative connections are formed based on the following
rules.
a) If the action possesses attributes, then the object is
enabled or disabled with respect to action/attribute pairs, and not
just the action.
b) If an action (or an action/attribute pair) is disabled with
respect to an object one moment and enabled the next, then make a
cooperative connection from the disabled object to the action the
object was just performing.
Again, the connection making strategy is naive and the connection is
one-way companion from the newly enabled action to the actions which
the object was involved with.
8) Competitive Connections Competitive connections are the
opposite of cooperative connections. If an action was enabled with
respect to some object and then becomes disabled, make competitive
connections between the newly disabled action and the action the
object was just performing. The connection is one-way enemy from the
newly disabled action to the action suspected.
Cooperative and competitive connections are meant to convey
information from an action to other actions about the likelihood that
the other action's occurrence will enable/disable the action sending
the activation. In real environments, in addition to actions being
disabled and enabled by other actions an object performs, they may
also be affected by actions that the object is a focus of or used by,
and also by circumstances arrived at indifferently to the object.
Presently, TEMPERAMENTAL programming does not take into account this
complication.
9) Connections from dynamic attributes to other nodes
Whenever a connection is made between an object O and another node,
then a connection is also made between each dynamic attribute of O
and the node.
2.3 Learning By Making and Breaking Connections
As mentioned, all the strategies for making the different kinds
of connections are naive. They will each result in many spurious
connections between nodes. This is done on principle. A connection is
made between nodes only if one does not already exist, and if a
connection does not already exist then the system has no way of
knowing, a priori, that it is spurious. TEMPERAMENTAL programming
balances its naivet<65> with methods for discovering and breaking the
spurious connections as it gains experience. Additionally, the
technique for spreading activation includes mechanisms to safeguard
against undiscovered spurious connections achieving an inordinate
amount of influence. Finally, the TEMPERAMENTAL system has more than
one learning mode, and the rules for making connections are applied
7
differently in each. The learning modes are characterized as
"Beginner" and "Expert," but do not take the names to mean that they
model how beginners or experts actually learn. They just denote that
one method is used early and the other later in the learning cycle
for the TEMPERAMENTAL program. Originally, they differed in two
important respects. They differed first concerning the level at which
they consider a connection to have degraded and gone bad, and
secondly they differed in how they treat a connection that has
degraded but is a candidate for being reconsidered. After running
experiments I found that a rudimentary ability to discover and remove
irrelevant connections that maintain strong weights was desirable.
The system was extended to incorporate this ability in expert mode.
After a connection is made, the weight on it is continually
being adjusted to reflect the system's experience in its environment.
Experience then causes some connections to strengthen and others to
weaken. When a connection becomes too weak it is considered to have
degraded and is broken, but it is saved by the system in a list of
bad'' connections. In Beginner mode, the system sets a relatively
low level for a connection to be broken. In addition, if the
TEMPERAMENTAL system subsequently has a reason to form the connection
again, it is automatically taken off of the bad'' list and re-
established at its previous strength level.
In Expert mode the system is more skeptical about its
connections. The level at which a connection is considered degraded
and broken is higher and it is not as easy to retrieve a connection
from the bad'' list. A confidence function is defined, and a
connection is only retrieved from the bad'' list if the system has
confidence in it. Confidence is based on the experience the system
has working with the receiver node of the connection. Specifically,
the confidence function is:
c = Bias Signal
If c > 1 and the signal was excitory, then the system has
confidence in the connection, or if c < 1 and the signal was
inhibitory, then the system has confidence in the connection;
otherwise, the system does not have confidence in the connection. The
signal is the value received by the giver node and that is being
considered for transference to the receiver node. The Bias is given
by:
Bias = log10(CurrentTotal)/log10(HighestTotal)
where CurrentTotal is the total number of opportunities on the weight
records of the connection under consideration, and HighestTotal is
the highest number of opportunities from other connections from the
same kind of node (object, action, dynamic_attribute, etc) that are
also currently relevant to the receiver node. The log10 of these
totals is taken to flatten the shape of the bias. Only large
differences should play a significant role in shaking confidence.
Differences within an order of magnitude do not matter a great deal.
For example, in the game of tag we may define a dynamic
attribute for objects that specifies their current distance from the
tagged player. A dependency connection from the dynamic attribute of
distance to flee's action attribute for direction will be made
8
whenever an object is fleeing from that distance. We may represent
the connection this way:
connection(dependency(da, aa),
distance(21, 23),
[flee, change(minusminus),
[[frequency, 3, 3], [recency, 1]]).
Distance(21, 23) means the player is between 21 and 23 units from the
it, [flee, change(minusminus)] is the receiver node and means that
the flee action should be in the minus X direction and the minus Y
direction, and the last spot contains the information for calculating
the weight of the connection. The frequency means that for 3 out of 3
times that an object has been at that distance and fled, it has fled
in the minusminus direction.
Now let us imagine there is another connection currently
relevant to the flee action. This signal comes from
direction(plusplus) and goes to the attribute change(plusplus). The
weights are [[frequency, 450, 578], [recency, 1]]. Naively, a
connection of 450 out of 578 is weaker than a connection of 3 out of
3. The question is, should we accept the weights naively? The
confidence function does not. The fact that one connection has only
had 3 chances to be related to the flee attribute while the other has
had 578 chances should be taken into account. It is likely that the
perfect correlation between the former weight was just coincidence
resulting from the smaller sample size. We use the larger total as a
standard to bias the multiplier. Therefore, we obtain a bias
Bias = log10(3)/log10(578) = 0.172
The bias is used to obtain the confidence for the activation
signal. Say the signal is 1.4, then
c = 1.4 0.172 = 0.24
Since 1 is the neutral signal, the bias has changed the signal from
excitory to inhibitory and there is no confidence in the connection.
Experiments turned up the need for a test for spuriousness
independent of the strength of the connection or the confidence in
it. Some connections from attributes to other nodes will remain
strong because there are only a small number of actions to be
performed, and the attribute has no effect on performance. Since the
attribute has no effect on performance, the connection simply records
the independent tendency of the system to perform the particular
action and this tendency may be very high. Therefore, the connection
never becomes weak and never degrades. Additionally, it may be an
attribute that the objects possess quite frequently, thus making its
opportunities high, enabling it to pass the confidence test. To catch
these kinds of connections the TEMPERAMENTAL system implements a
relevancy test for keeping a connection when in Expert mode. Because
it was added late, the mechanism is quite crude and only tests for
the relevancy of connections between dynamic attributes and actions.
However, I believe that natural extensions to the present theory
9
would smoothly allow more sophisticated tests1. The relevancy test
hinges on the variation of connection strength between different
values of a dynamic attribute and the action being considered. A
connection between a dynamic attribute's value and an action is
relevant if it satisfies at least one of these criteria:
1) The frequency on the connection for this value of the
attribute varies significantly from the average frequency for
connections between the other values of the
attribute and the action.
2 a) Some values of the attribute are not connected to the
action,
b) the unconnected values possess some connections to some
actions, and
c) the system has confidence in at least one of these
connections.
3) The dynamic attribute has only one value.
The explanation for 2 is simple. If only some values of an
attribute are connected to the action, then the system must decide if
this implies that the connection from the attribute value under
consideration to the action under consideration is, indeed,
significant. To decide, it checks to see if the unconnected values
have been encountered before. If they have been encountered
frequently enough that the system has gained confidence in one of the
connections from them, then the system assumes that the reason the
unconnected value is unconnected is because the value of the dynamic
attribute does, indeed, make a difference. On the other hand, if it
has no confidence in any connections to the unconnected value
(meaning that it does not have much experience with it), then it
makes the assumption that if the connection existed, then it would
not make a difference to the final average. If a connection is deemed
irrelevant, it is put on a list of irrelevant connections and can
never be retrieved.
To recap, in Beginner mode the level for degradation of
connections is set relatively low and connections are retrieved from
the bad'' list readily. In expert mode, the level for degradation
is raised and a connection is retrieved from the bad'' list only if
the system has confidence in it, and a test for the irrelevancy of
connections between dynamic attributes and actions is implemented.
These two strategies applied serially are generally enough to
preserve the good connections and to remove the spurious ones.
1 The extensions that I have in mind include establishing
category nodes for dynamic attributes and relations between dynamic
attributes. The category nodes would help control the flow of
activation and are something I planned to add to a more sophisticated
system well before considering the relevancy issue. It is fortuitous
that they should be able to help with relevancy also.
10
2.4 Learning by Adjusting Weights
Unlike many other connectionist systems, the weights on
connections never settle into a learned state but are continually
recalculated from moment to moment to reflect the learner's
experiences in the environment. The weights are calculated from the
average of frequency and a recency function, or
w = (fq + f(rc))/2
The frequency portion of the weight also consists of two
measures. The first measure is of the frequency of success of the
connection, and the second measure is of the number of opportunities
to succeed that the connection has had. Remember, each connection has
a semantic meaning, and the meaning denotes a relationship between
the nodes connected (focus, using, expectation, etc). We use this
semantic meaning to determine if the relationship between the nodes
is satisfied in the current moment. If it is, then we increment the
success portion of the frequency weight. We can also determine if the
current moment contained situations in which there was an opportunity
for the relationship to be satisfied. We then increment the
opportunities portion of the frequency weight for each opportunity
found. The frequency is then simply:
fq = Successes/Opportunities
A connection is degraded if its frequency function falls below a set
level. The level is set by the learning mode, Beginner or Expert ,
that the TEMPERAMENTAL program is in.
While the frequency function reflects the overall trends in the
environment, TEMPERAMENTAL systems can also be biased towards the
recent past. If a relationship denoted by a connection is currently
satisfied, we shall represent this by assigning the connection a
recency weight of 1. If the relationship could have been satisfied
but was not, then the recency weight will be incremented by 1 from
whatever its current level is. Thus, if a relationship is currently
satisfied its recency goes to 1, and then if it goes 3 opportunities
without being satisfied the recency will be at 4. A limit on the
amount recency may be incremented is established, and the value
associated with each recency is between 0 and 1. The values are
stored in a table with the number 1 having the highest value and the
values then decreasing sharply downward. The table used by SALMON had
the values
recency_table(1, 0.80).
recency_table(_, 0.65).
The value given by 1 must be below 1.0 so that perfect
correlations in the frequency function do not endlessly cycle through
the network. I tried differences greater than 0.15 between the high
value and the low value, but they seemed to cause the system to
continually repeat it's last action. 0.80 seems to work well, at
least for this particular implementation. The other weight was
similarly hand-tuned. As it turns out, the rule governing what values
should be in the table is the obvious one they should reflect the
effect recency has in the environment to be learned. Since the
simulation I wrote to act as an environment for SALMON only biases
its players towards their most recent behavior without regard for
more than the immediate past, only the value for 1 should be biased
11
in the learner. Allowing many more levels of "memory" by adding to
the table produces a bias towards recent behavior not found in the
simulation.
2.5 Adjusting Particular Connections
1) The Expectation Connection The expectation connection is
satisfied if object O is performing the action expected. An
opportunity occurs if the object is enabled to perform the action.
2) The Exclusive Connection An exclusive connection between
attributes and actions is a success if the object is not performing
the action, is enabled to perform the action, and has the attribute.
An opportunity for an exclusive connection occurs whenever the object
has the attribute, was previously performing the excluded action, and
is currently enabled to perform it. Successes and opportunities
between objects and actions in exclusive connections are judged
similarly, except the judgement is made without regard to attributes
the object may possess.
3) Focus Connections The focus connection between objects is
satisfied between O1 and O2 if O2 currently is the focus of O1's
action. There is an opportunity if some object is the focus of O1.
The focus connection from an action to an object is satisfied if the
object is currently the focus of the action. An opportunity exists if
the action is being performed. Since an action can be multiply
instantiated, the adjustment must take into account each
instantiation.
4) Using Connections A success in a using connection between
objects O1 and O2 occurs if O1 is using O2. An opportunity occurs if
O1 is using something. A success for using connections between
objects and actions occurs for an action A and an object O2 if the
action A is currently using O2. An opportunity occurs if the action
is being performed and is using something.
5) Sequence Connections A success for a sequence connection
from A1 to A2 occurs if an object is performing A1 one moment and A2
the next. An opportunity occurs if an object was performing A1 at the
previous moment.
6) Dependency Connections A successful dependency connection
occurs when an object is performing the action with the specified
attribute, and either it has the dynamic attribute or the focus of
its action has the dynamic attribute. An opportunity occurs if an
object is performing the action and either the object or its focus
has the attribute.
7) Cooperative Connections A success for a cooperative
connection occurs if the giving action in the connection becomes
enabled with respect to an object after being disabled, and the
object just performed the receiving action. An opportunity occurs
simply if the giving node was disabled with respect to an object and
the receiving action was performed by the object. An alternative way
to count an opportunity would be if the giving node changed states
from disabled to enabled. This alternative method captures the
likelihood that a change in state is caused by the receiving node,
whereas the method used captures the likelihood that the receiving
node being performed will cause the change in state. Since the
12
connection is used by the giver to enable itself, the method used was
deemed to provide the more valuable information.
8) Competitive connections A competitive connection is a
success if the giving action was enabled with respect to an object,
and became disabled after the object was performing the receiving
action. An opportunity is occurs if the giving action was previously
enabled and then becomes disabled.
3.0 Spreading Activation
Once the TEMPERAMENTAL learner has had a significant number of
moments observing the environment he may participate. Participation
in an environment occurs by inputting activation into the
connectionist network it built as an observer and letting the
activation spread through the nodes. Before spreading activation, all
nodes have their activation levels returned to a start'' point.
There is no need to save the activation levels from previous
computations because the result is captured in the recency weights on
the connections. The input nodes into the net are the ones
corresponding to the objects presently in the environment and the
actions that they are performing. Thus, the nodes input into are not
fixed, but rather change with every moment. This is in stark contrast
to many other connectionist architectures, particularly those which
use back-propagation, which are arranged hierarchically with fixed
input and output nodes. Each node passes activation along its
connections to other nodes and uses the information on the
connections to determine a transfer value for the activation.
Following is a discussion of the factors used to calculate the
transfer value.
3.1 Relevance of a connection
Nodes form many connections, not all of which are relevant at
any given time. Before a connection can transfer a signal from one
node to another, it must pass a relevance test. A connection is
relevant if one or more of the following are true:
1) At least one of the nodes is the relevant object.
2) The connection is a sequence connection and the relevant
object is enabled with respect to the giving node.
3) At least one of the nodes is a dynamic attribute of the
relevant object.
4) The connection is not an expectation or exclusive connection
and at least one of the nodes is currently the focus of the
relevant object.
5) The connection is not an expectation or exclusive connection
and at least one of the nodes is a dynamic attribute possessed
by an object that currently is the focus of the relevant
object.
6) The connection is an expectation or exclusive connection, at
least one of the nodes is currently the focus of the learner,
and the focus is enabled with respect to the action involved.
7) The connection is an expectation or exclusive connection, at
least one of the nodes is a dynamic attribute possessed by an
13
object that currently is the focus of the learner, and the
focus is currently enabled with respect to the action involved.
8) The relevant object is currently the focus of at least one
of the nodes.
9) At least one of the nodes is an attribute of an object which
currently has the relevant object as its focus.
The relevant object is usually the learner but may be changed
dynamically to suit the system's purpose. Detailed discussion of
tests 4 - 7 is deferred until section 9. Activation is input into the
network as excitory through the nodes corresponding to each object
and each action present in the environment. The point of view of the
learner is achieved by biasing the input into the nodes representing
itself and the action it is currently performing. The bias multiplies
the normal input level.
3.2 The Transfer Function
Each input represents a signal which increases the activation
level of the node receiving it. Signals above one are excitory and
signals between 0 and 1 are inhibitory. Every time a signal passes
through a connection, it is moved closer to the neutral value.
Eventually all activation stops as the signals expend their energy
moving through connections. The transfer function takes the values
stored in the connection as arguments and determines how much energy
the signal will expend traversing the connection. When an activation
expends so much energy traversing a connection that it falls within a
defined neighborhood of 1, then it is exhausted and is not
transferred.
All signals are input as excitory. If an excitory signal must
pass through an enemy connection, then it becomes inhibitory. If M is
the excitory value of the signal, then 1/M is the inhibitory value.
Conversely, an inhibitory signal passing through an enemy connection
becomes excitory (see section 2.3). If M is the value of the
inhibitory signal, its corresponding excitory value is 1/M.
Otherwise, the signal maintains its type.
We define for each connection a raw weight. The raw weight of a
connection is the average of the frequency function and the recency
function given by
rw = (fq + f(rc))/2 (see section 2.4)
The actual weight of the connection is dependent on the type of
signal being transferred. If the signal being transferred is
inhibitory then the actual weight is given by
actual = 1/rw
Otherwise, actual = rw
The signal received is multiplied by the actual weight of the
connection, which always moves the signal closer to 1 than it was
before passing through the connection. If it becomes too close to 1
then the signal is not transferred. An additional check is made by
passing the signal and connection to the confidence function. The
confidence function bias may move the activation even further towards
the neutral level. Recall, the confidence bias is given by
14
Bias = log10(Giver)/log10(HighestRelevant)
where Giver is the opportunity value on the connection the signal is
passing through, and HighestRelevant is the highest opportunity of
any connection currently relevant to the receiver node, the reciever
node is also receiving in the HighestRelevant connection, and the
giver node in the HighestRelevant connection is of the same type as
the giver node in the Giver connection (See section 2.3 for a
detailed discussion of the confidence function). If the signal fails
the confidence test then it is not transferred.
When signals are passed through object nodes, three things
occur.
1) The object's activation level is multiplied by the signal
received.
2) The signal is transferred to all relevant nodes connected to
the object.
3) The signal is transferred to all relevant nodes connected to
the object's dynamic attributes.
When activation is passed through an action, two things occur.
1) Its activation level is multiplied by the signal.
2) The signal is transferred to all relevant nodes connected to
it.
Dynamic attributes do not have activation levels. They merely
act as conduits for signals from objects to other nodes. The transfer
function for a connection involving a dynamic attribute is exactly
the same as for connections involving any other kind of nodes. There
is no penalty as the signal moves from the object to its dynamic
attributes, but the transfer function is applied as the signal
propagates from the dynamic attribute to other nodes.
Currently, a signal passing through a dynamic attribute is
finagled sometimes. More than one object may possess any given
attribute at any given time. If many objects with relatively weak
activation levels possess an attribute, the nodes connected to that
attribute receive a great deal of activation. Generally, this is
enough to overpower the effect of any dynamic attributes represented
by only a single object. However, this group effect is often not
desirable, as the system is really concerned only with the effects
associated with individuals and does not care how they are grouped.
To correct this grouping effect, whenever a signal is passed through
a multiply instantiated dynamic attribute the system biases the
signal in the following way divide the activation level of the
object the signal is emanating from by the highest activation level
of the other objects with the dynamic attribute, and then multiply
the signal by this ratio. That is, if object O is passing a signal M
through its attribute DA, then
GroupingBias = activation level(O)/activation level(O2)
15
where O2 is the most highly activated object possessing that
attribute.
In principle, a multiply instantiated attribute could still
greatly affect the result obtained in the network, but in practice
activation levels quickly diverge so only the activation from the
most highly activated possessor has much influence. Of course,
sometimes a group effect is appropriate. This solution is temporary
and, admittedly, a compromise. A better solution would be for the
system to determine for itself when a group effect matters, and
choose its strategy for spreading activation appropriately.
Action attributes merely collect activation. They do not
transfer it. So when a signal is received by an action attribute then
the attribute's activation level is modified and the activation stops
there.
3.3 Choosing an Action
Once activation has been input and spread into the network,
then the learner decides on the course of action to be taken. There
are no thresholds in TEMPERAMENTAL programs. Competition between
nodes is strictly the accumulation of wealth, wealth being
represented by the activation level. The procedure for choosing an
action is as follows:
1) Choose the action with the highest activation level.
2) If the learner is enabled with respect to this action, go to
choosing an attribute.
3) Else choose the action with the next highest activation
level.
4) Go to step 2.
Once an action has been chosen, then the system must decide on
an attribute. The procedure is as follows:
1) If the action has no attributes, perform the action.
2) Else, choose the attribute with the highest activation
level.
3) If the learner is enabled with respect to this
action/attribute pair then perform the action with that
attribute.
4) Else, input activation into the highly activated node and
spread the activation only through the cooperative and
competitive connections, then go to "Choosing an action."1
1The algorithm does not call for the system to search for the
next most highly activated attribute because, generally, this is not
reliable. It is not unusual for only the appropriate attribute to
have been activated. Therefore, choosing the next highest would be
random. Spreading the energy from the cooperative and competitive
brings out the appropriate response.
16
If the action requires a focus, then choose the highest
activated object in the environment which the semantics say is
appropriate and available. If the action requires a tool, then choose
the highest activated object in the environment which the semantics
say is appropriate and available.
The execution of the action consists of running a procedure
which affects the properties or relationships of objects in the
environment. These semantics are responsible for specifying and
choosing a focus if one is needed, and also any tools. Additionally,
it is responsible for making any changes in the tools, focus or
learner that are necessary. In execution of it's duties, the
semantics are empowered to spread activation through the learner in
appropriate ways, including simulating other points of view by
altering which node the input bias is used on and sending signals to
nodes which are not currently present in the environment. This is how
the system answers "What if?" questions, and, also, can daydream. The
daydreaming ability is realized by allowing activation to be input
into the network from within the TEMPERAMENTAL program as well as by
the environment. In principle, the TEMPERAMENTAL system can activate
any arbitrary combination of nodes and see what consequences follow.
This capability can be used to theorize, daydream, imagine
counterfactuals, etc. Its greatest advantage is that, harnessed and
used in a sophisticated manner, it could help the system learn.
4.0 SALMON
A TEMPERAMENTAL system has been implemented to learn the game
of tag by observing the execution of a discrete event simulation of
the game. The system was implemented in Quintus Prolog version 2.0 on
a SUN Sparcstation. The name of the implemented program is SALMON.
The simulation outputs a game state from moment to moment which is
then translated by an interface module into a predicate language that
SALMON and his TEMPERAMENTAL learning mechanism can understand.
The only objects in the environment are the players. The number
of players varied from 4 to 7. The number of players does not affect
SALMON's performance after he has learned, but during learning a high
number of players gives better results. Two factors are responsible.
First, more players give a statistically better sampling so we would
expect better behavior. The second reason has to do with the way the
simulation is programmed. If a player is being chased, it always
flees. Therefore, if you have a small number of players then one is
always tagged and of the remaining players at least one is always
fleeing. Therefore, the sample becomes biased towards fleeing,
especially the sequence connections which will record the large
number of sequences that the chased player flees consecutively
without the less determined sequences of the other players tempering
it. After the learning period, SALMON can be inserted as a player and
participate in the game. Upon insertion, the simulation simply
transfers control to SALMON whenever it is time to decide what his
next move will be. After SALMON has decided and executed his
decision, control passes back to the simulation.
Six actions were defined for the game:
17
1) Flee An untagged player flees by increasing the distance
between himself and the player currently tagged.
2) Tease An untagged player teases by decreasing the distance
between himself and the player currently tagged.
3) Chase The tagged player chases another player by
decreasing the distance between himself and the player being
chased.
4) Count After a tag has been made, the newly tagged player
must stand still and count for a specified number of moments.
5) Make-tag If an untagged player is within one step of the
tagged player, then the tagged player may make a tag on the
untagged player. Making a tag consists of transferring the
tagged attribute.
6) Stayput A player may, at any time, stand still.
Three different kinds of dynamic attributes were defined which
objects (players) in the environment can possess.
1) Being tagged SALMON was informed who was currently tagged
by making tagged a dynamic attribute. In real life there are
versions of the game of tag, such as ball tag where the it
carries a ball allowing being tagged to be physically
observable. We can think of this game of tag as being like ball
tag.
2) Distance from the it Since the currently tagged player is
the focal point of the game, SALMON was informed of the
distance each player was from the it at each moment. This
distance was presented as a dynamic attribute of the players.
3) Direction from the it The it was also considered the
origin (0,0) of a cartesian graph, and the direction that each
player was from the it was attached to objects as a dynamic
attribute. The directions were (in (X Y) notation): (plus
plus), (plus minus), (plus same), (minus plus), (minus minus),
(minus same), (same plus), and (same minus).
The action attributes were the general direction which any of
the movement actions could take. They were mapped onto the direction
from the it dynamic attributes with the addition of (same same) for
standing still.
5.0 The Simulation
The simulation was a discrete event simulation in which each
player's next set of attributes was determined solely from his
current set, mostly without regard to changes in any other player's
attributes. The player's strategies were quite straightforward. If a
player was tagged he chose another player to chase based on a
function of that player's distance from him and the difference in
their speeds. Chasing a player meant decreasing the difference
between the pursuer's X and Y coordinates so that they converged
towards the chased player's coordinates.
18
Player's who were untagged had a choice of actions: tease,
flee, and stayput. Functions were also defined for these actions
based on a player's current distance from the it and the difference
in speed between the player and the it. This function returned a
value between 0 and 1. A uniformly distributed random number was
generated, and if it was below the value returned by the function
then the action being considered was performed, otherwise another
action was considered. The functions were defined so that faster or
more distant players were more likely to tease or stand still. Slower
or nearer players were likely to flee. Fleeing players were not given
knowledge about how to use open space or any other sophisticated
strategies. The playing field was bounded and untagged players were
not allowed to go out of bounds
6.0 The Interface to the Learner
SALMON was always provided with the following information about
the current moment and the immediately preceding moment. A translator
was responsible for asserting
1) clauses telling SALMON what objects were performing what
actions, with any attributes included.
2) clauses telling SALMON what the focus of each action and
object was.
3) clauses informing SALMON what the dynamic attributes
possessed by the objects were.
4) clauses saying which actions were enabled and disabled with
regard to each object.
These clauses play the role of a rather sophisticated
perceptual system. In particular, informing SALMON of the focus of
actions and objects assumes a highly developed instinct. Such
recognition in animals requires hardwired instincts for recognizing
certain traits in the environment; brightly colored objects, sudden
movement, movement in general, diminishing and increasing distances,
concepts of personal space, etc. Additionally, such recognition uses
inborn and developed abilities animals have to recognize what
satisfies and motivates them and allows them to project it to other
creatures. For instance, an animal is satisfied by food and so if it
sees another animal stalking prey, killing it and eventually eating
it, it is likely that it may know by projection that the killed
animal was the focus of all the killer's action. This is because the
actions led to a situation it desires, namely, satisfying hunger.
When another animal satisfies a similar desire, then the observing
animal perhaps feels a titular satisfaction also, and uses this
feeling to recognize that it should imitate. These subtle clues in
the environment and the internal models that allow animals to pick
them out are presently beyond the ability of the simulation to
provide or TEMPERAMENTAL systems to simulate. Therefore, it is
necessary that focus information be provided to SALMON.
The rules of the game were semantically encoded as enabling
conditions on actions. The rules were
1) untagged players must stay in bounds.
19
2) only tagged players can chase, count or make-tag.
3) only untagged players can flee or tease.
4) a player may only count if the count is above one.
This information amounted to permission information for the
different actions. A great deal was left for SALMON to learn. In
particular, it had to discover that flee meant moving away from the
it, and, indeed, what it means to move away. It had to discover that
tease meant moving closer to the it and what moving closer is. It had
to induct the functions for deciding when to flee or tease, meaning
it had to tease more often when it was far away or the it was slower
and flee conversely. It had to discover what to do when it reaches a
boundary and cannot perform the action it would most like to. It had
to discover that it should make-tag when it is close to another
player. It had to discover that it should count after being tagged.
Finally, it had to learn to make the rather difficult judgement
concerning who to chase when it is tagged and what direction to move
in to run the player down. All in all, there was a great deal for the
system to learn. Of course, an on-going goal of TEMPERAMENTAL
programming as a research effort is to reduce the semantics that must
be provided to the system. Performing actions consisted simply of
updating the X and Y coordinates of SALMON, and his tagged attribute
if necessary.
7.0 Results
The results were surprisingly good. The learning session
consisted of 500 moments watching the simulation in Beginner mode and
1000 watching in Expert mode. SALMON was then inserted into the game
as various players. Scripts were written to files and animated. To
the naked eye, SALMON appears virtually identical to the simulated
players in an animation. Examination of the scripts and connections
reveals a difference between SALMON's behavior and the other players.
Four scripts, inserting SALMON as a different player in each,
were run for 200 moments each. Each script was begun from the same
point in the action. The simulation was then run from this same point
without SALMON's participation. A comparison of the results of each
run with SALMON to the run without SALMON turned up some interesting
results.
7.1 Analysis
We can list each of the items available for SALMON to learn:
1) Count after being tagged.
2) Chase after counting.
3) Choose a "reasonable" player to chase.
4) Move in the direction of the player chosen for the chase.
5) Tag players it is chasing when it gets close to them.
6) Flee when close to the it.
7) Flee more often if the it is faster than SALMON.
8) When fleeing, move away from the it.
9) Tease when further away from the it.
20
10) Tease slower players more often.
11) When teasing, move towards the it.
12) Choose an appropriate move when at the boundaries.
13) Stand still sometimes.
SALMON eventually learned to do 1-12 almost flawlessly. Still,
finding a training set that provided good tease behavior proved
difficult. In no training set would SALMON stand still. SALMON's
difficulty in picking up both these behaviors is related. Flee is
performed more often by untagged players than either tease or
stayput. As the disparity grows larger from flee to tease to stayput
SALMON has more and more difficulty deciding when the less frequently
performed actions are appropriate, and defaults to the global
tendency. Especially apparent was the tendency for SALMON to continue
with whatever action it was performing. Of course, the sequence
connection was responsible for this tendency, especially in the case
of fleeing which quite often follows itself in time. In a situation
in which tease has only a small advantage over flee for the other
connections, the sequence connection tended to make a huge difference
in favor of flee if SALMON was already fleeing. Eventually, I was
able to coax perfect tease behavior from SALMON but it took a great
deal of experimentation. The final result was not caused from an ad
hoc change, but rather resulted from the discovery of general faults
with the earlier versions of the system and corrections to them. The
changes were:
1) The criteria which determines the momentary relevance of
connections must direct the spread of activation adequately.
Specifically, signals from the sequence connections should not be
spread unless SALMON is enabled for the giver node in the connection.
It makes no sense for SALMON to consider what follows from actions
that it cannot perform.
2) In the same vein, expectation and exclusive connections to
an object which is SALMON's focus at the moment should not be spread
unless the focus object is enabled with respect to the action in the
connection. For example, if SALMON is focusing on the player that is
the it, SALMON should not spread activation to the expectation that
the it will flee.
3) The values in the recency table should accurately reflect
the effect of recency in the environment to be learned. Improper
deviation's can cause SALMON to either care too much for the recent
past or disregard it totally.
4) The sequence connections should be purely excitory rather
than companion.
These corrections to the original algorithm are not fully
general, but they are not completely ad hoc either. Rather, they are
moves in the right direction that an expanded TEMPERAMENTAL model
would have to improve upon. The first three problems can be
considered generally as controlling the spread of activation (1 & 2)
and correctly tuning the system's parameters (3). More detailed
discussion of these problems is deferred until section 10. Correction
4, the redefinition of the sequence connection, occurred because the
natal stage of the theory made it easy to incorrectly define
connections, not from fundamental problems with the ideas behind the
21
theory. Basically, the terms need to be formalized. I did not realize
that sequence connections should not be companion because I was
working with a vague, intuitive idea of it. All the connections,
nodes and other elements of the system need more formal, precise
definitions.
The weight adjusting algorithm was pathologically bad in the
case of stayput. It is unusual for a player in the simulation to
perform stayput for more than 1, maybe 2, consecutive moments.
Expectation connections were strengthened whenever an object
performed an action it was enabled to perform, and weakened whenever
an object did not perform an action it was enabled to perform.
Oppositely, exclusive connections were strengthened whenever an
object was not performing an action that it was enabled to perform
and weakened whenever an object was performing the action. Since
objects generally had the same attributes (because they stood still)
when they stopped performing the stayput action as they had when they
started, the system strengthened the exclusive connection to stayput
nearly every time it strengthened the expectation connection! With
these adjustments nearly always canceling one another out, the system
never really built any power to excite stayput. I would like to add
however, as a caveat, that TEMPERAMENTAL programming really was not
designed to pick up on patterns like stayput behavior and I never
expected the system to do it. The system is designed to be able to
detect and mimic caused changes, whereas the stayput behavior by the
simulation's players is not only the least frequently performed, but
also the most uniformly distributed action and the one involving the
least amount of change.
On the positive side, the system nearly always had the correct
direction for whatever action it performed. It always counted after
being tagged, acted reasonably at the boundaries and made the tag
when it got close to a player it was chasing. What was, to me, more
impressive was the good behavior it showed when it had to chase. I
considered the chase decision to be the most difficult it had to make
and actually expected to get something more akin to a random walk
than a chase. Below is a typical excerpt from a script. In it, SALMON
is player number 4, the it. The first number in the clause is just an
index for the simulation to use in its memory management. The second
number is the player number. The next two are the X and Y
coordinates, and, finally, the value of the tagged property and
action for each player. It is informative to study the script from
moment to moment. I provide comments to point out the interesting
facets of the chase.
moment(Index, Player Number, X, Y, Property Value, Action)
1 The simulation is programmed so that the player being chased
always flees, so we know immediately that SALMON must be chasing
players 1, 7, or 2 since they are the only players fleeing.
moment(1,4,22.1559,13.5921,tagged,chase)
moment(1,1,19.0,12.5,untagged,flee)
moment(1,7,17.9619,7.61374,untagged,flee)
22
moment(1,2,17.0,3.25,untagged,flee)
moment(1,5,39.8124,8.29486,untagged,tease)
moment(1,3,41.8862,6.32001,untagged,stayput)
moment(1,6,22.8083,9.09282,untagged,tease)
2 SALMON has continued to chase (as opposed to stayput, flee,
count, tease, make-tag, etc... we should remember it has to make a
choice at every moment) and has decreased both its X and Y
coordinates. Unfortunately, all the candidate players for being
chased have lower X and Y coordinates than SALMON so this doesn't
help us discover which it is chasing.
moment(2,4,20.7559,12.1921,tagged,chase)
moment(2,1,17.5,11.0,untagged,flee)
moment(2,7,16.6619,6.31374,untagged,flee)
moment(2,2,15.75,2.0,untagged,flee)
moment(2,5,38.4624,9.64485,untagged,tease)
moment(2,3,43.1661,5.04001,untagged,flee)
moment(2,6,22.8083,9.09282,untagged,stayput)
3 SALMON has once again lowered his X and Y coordinate. Player 7
has decided to tease, so we know that it must be chasing 1 or 2.
Notice that SALMON does not chase in a direction where there are no
players, nor does it chase in a direction where the closest player is
far away, like player 5 in the +X, +Y direction.
moment(1,4,19.3558,10.7921,tagged,chase)
moment(1,1,16.0,9.5,untagged,flee)
moment(1,7,17.9619,7.61373,untagged,tease)
moment(1,2,15.75,3.25,untagged,flee)
moment(1,5,37.1124,10.9948,untagged,tease)
moment(1,3,41.8861,6.32001,untagged,tease)
moment(1,6,21.2582,10.6428,untagged,tease)
4 SALMON is consistent. It continues on its course and does not
take a random walk around the playing field.
moment(2,4,17.9558,9.39204,tagged,chase)
moment(2,1,16.0,8.0,untagged,flee)
moment(2,7,16.6619,6.31373,untagged,flee)
moment(2,2,15.75,2.0,untagged,flee)
moment(2,5,35.7623,9.64484,untagged,tease)
moment(2,3,40.6061,7.60001,untagged,tease)
moment(2,6,22.8082,9.0928,untagged,flee)
23
5 SALMON appears to be closing in.
moment(1,4,16.5558,7.99204,tagged,chase)
moment(1,1,16.0,6.5,untagged,flee)
moment(1,7,15.3619,5.01373,untagged,flee)
moment(1,2,15.75,3.25,untagged,flee)
moment(1,5,34.4123,8.29483,untagged,tease)
moment(1,3,39.326,8.88,untagged,tease)
moment(1,6,24.3582,7.5428,untagged,flee)
6 It will be a difficult choice who to finish off among the three
players all bunched up together.
moment(2,4,15.1558,6.59204,tagged,chase)
moment(2,1,16.0,5.0,untagged,flee)
moment(2,7,15.3619,3.71373,untagged,flee)
moment(2,2,15.75,2.0,untagged,flee)
moment(2,5,33.0623,6.94483,untagged,tease)
moment(2,3,38.046,7.60001,untagged,tease)
moment(2,6,25.9082,5.9928,untagged,flee)
7 SALMON inexplicably raises its Y coordinate, perhaps distracted
by player's 3 and 5, two of the slower players, both in that
direction. A simulation player would never do this, so SALMON has not
learned perfectly. Actually, I considered this good. I wanted
heuristic learning methods that gave good behavior but not perfect
behavior. I don't know any perfect biological learners.
moment(1,4,16.5558,7.99203,tagged,chase)
moment(1,1,17.5,3.5,untagged,flee)
moment(1,7,16.6618,2.41373,untagged,flee)
moment(1,2,15.75,2.0,untagged,stayput)
moment(1,5,31.7122,5.59483,untagged,tease)
moment(1,3,39.326,8.88,untagged,flee)
moment(1,6,27.4582,4.44279,untagged,flee)
8 It seems back on track. SALMON has moved +X, -Y, so obviously it
is going after player 7. Player 1 is also in that direction but it is
teasing so can't be the player being chased. Player 1 is pretty fast,
but player 7 is slow. The tease by player 1 should tempt SALMON.
moment(2,4,17.9557,6.59203,tagged,chase)
moment(2,1,16.0,5.0,untagged,tease)
moment(2,7,17.9618,1.11373,untagged,flee)
moment(2,2,15.75,2.0,untagged,stayput)
moment(2,5,33.0622,4.24483,untagged,flee)
moment(2,3,38.046,7.60001,untagged,tease)
moment(2,6,29.0082,2.8928,untagged,flee)
24
9 SALMON is continuing after player 7. This is a good choice
because player 1 is faster than SALMON.
moment(1,4,19.3557,5.19203,tagged,chase)
moment(1,1,16.0,3.5,untagged,flee)
moment(1,7,19.2618,1.11373,untagged,flee)
moment(1,2,15.75,3.25,untagged,flee)
moment(1,5,31.7122,5.59483,untagged,tease)
moment(1,3,36.7659,6.32001,untagged,tease)
moment(1,6,30.5582,1.3428,untagged,flee)
10 This is a tough situation for SALMON. The player it has been
chasing, player 7, is in the (plus minus) direction, but two players
in the (minus minus) direction appear to be only a step or two away
from being caught also. I am not sure what the simulation would do in
this circumstance.
moment(2,4,17.9557,3.79203,tagged,chase)
moment(2,1,16.0,2.0,untagged,flee)
moment(2,7,17.9618,1.11373,untagged,flee)
moment(2,2,15.75,2.0,untagged,flee)
moment(2,5,30.3622,4.24483,untagged,tease)
moment(2,3,35.4859,5.04001,untagged,tease)
moment(2,6,32.1082,1.3428,untagged,flee)
11 SALMON goes after the two players and appears ready to finish
off the chase, decreasing its own X and Y coordinates for the second
moment in a row. I wonder if its decision here was affected by the
grouping? It appears close enough to tag either player 1 or player 2.
moment(1,4,16.5557,2.39203,tagged,chase)
moment(1,1,16.0,3.5,untagged,flee)
moment(1,7,19.2618,1.11373,untagged,flee)
moment(1,2,15.75,3.25,untagged,flee)
moment(1,5,31.7122,5.59483,untagged,flee)
moment(1,3,34.2059,3.76001,untagged,tease)
moment(1,6,33.6581,1.3428,untagged,flee)
12 SALMON decides to make the tag. Remember, the semantics do not
force it to do so; the system was free to continue chasing
indefinitely.
moment(2,2,15.75,3.25,tagged,count)
moment(2,4,16.5557,2.39203,untagged,make_tag)
moment(2,1,16.0,5.0,untagged,flee)
moment(2,7,20.5618,1.11373,untagged,flee)
moment(2,5,30.3622,4.24483,untagged,tease)
moment(2,3,32.9258,2.48001,untagged,tease)
moment(2,6,32.1081,2.8928,untagged,tease)
Sequences such as this are typical and impressive. SALMON was
quite consistent in producing this kind of behavior when tagged. When
25
untagged, it also always chose a proper direction, the one real
problem, as mentioned earlier, is that it never stood still.
8.0 Issues Raised
As it stands, SALMON and TEMPERAMENTAL programming cannot make
any strong claims about learning and cognition. Their most useful
contribution is as an exercise for determining just what abilities a
hybrid system built along these lines might have, what limitations,
and what problems need to be addressed. This section is a discussion
along those lines.
SALMON shares one limitation with human beings that is rather
interesting. As it tries to think'' about more than one issue
simultaneously its performance on all the issues deteriorates. This
is a consequence of using a bias on the input to simulate a point of
view. If only one bias is used SALMON performs very well. One bias is
like asking it What is object X (where X is the object receiving
the bias) going to do next?'' But if you wish to ask it to consider
two or more situations simultaneously then the ordering of activation
levels becomes less reliable. The highest activated objects and
actions sometimes may be appropriately paired together, but finding
the appropriate pairing for the second highest activated object and
action is more difficult. It is not a simple mapping. Since the brain
is highly parallel I have always thought it was mysterious that we
must focus so often on a single issue in order to think clearly about
it. The answer to how a limitation like this can arise in a parallel
network is not obvious. Therefore, I find it interesting that this
kind of concentration'' which also is a property of animal
intelligence should emerge from the highly parallel TEMPERAMENTAL
algorithm.
Neurons have been characterized simplistically as having all or
nothing firing behaviors. Accordingly, many connectionist nets use
thresholds and have nodes with all or nothing firing behavior. It is
significant that TEMPERAMENTAL systems diverge from this behavior.
The divergence can be defended on two grounds, one from the point of
view of connectionist systems and the other from the point of view of
semantic systems
1) As a hybrid system, SALMON's nodes represent complex
concepts. These concepts would likely be represented in the brain by
many millions of neurons and not a single neuron. With any given
input, some neurons in this representation will fire as activation
spreads, even though the whole neural ensemble encoding the action or
object may not. The various biases in the TEMPERAMENTAL system, the
confidence function and connection weight, can be thought of as
representing the proportion of neurons in the ensemble representing
the giving concept that will fire into the receiving concept given a
certain level of activation passed into the whole ensemble1. The
1 Of course, I am not saying that the actual strength is
captured by the weights on the connection. All I mean to imply is
that, in the brain, any ensemble of neurons will have constituents
26
highest activation levels at the end then represent the ensemble
which had the highest number of individual neural firings during
computation.
2) On mentalistic grounds, spreading activation through a
transfer function can be defended on the basis of communication
between concepts. The TEMPERAMENTAL system must reason through time,
and therefore must take into account the future. Let us imagine that
action nodes had thresholds and the firing of a node represented a
decision to perform the action. In this case, the action could not
have input from the future about whether or not it should fire until
after the decision was made! Admittedly, a more complicated
interpretation could be put on the firing of a node, but that would
also require a more complicated algorithm for spreading activation.
It is better to use a transfer function and have nodes "fire" only
once, when computation is finished.
Philosophically, SALMON gains expectations from the simplest
possible induction over experience. It is interesting that a
calculation as simple as the successes/opportunities ratio is enough
to make the correct induction when magnified and balanced in a
network, even in SALMON's simplified world. Additionally, perfect
correlations lead to very strong expectations. SALMON's highest
action was often count regardless of the context. Only the semantic
enabling conditions kept it from always counting1. This is because
the count action had a perfect expectation. It was always performed
whenever it was enabled. This seems interestingly like how we might
take for granted propositions like, "The sun will rise tomorrow
receiving signals at any given time. Each of these individual neurons
participates in other ensembles and some will fire, sending signals
here and others over there. Some pairs of ensembles share more
interconnections between constituent neurons, and share more neurons,
than others. We can think of the TEMPERAMENTAL weights as vaguely
representing the degree to which neurons are interconnected or
outright shared between concepts. Therefore, the entire concept does
not have to "fire" to signal another concept, but only has to pass
along some proportion of the signals that its constituent neurons
send out from the signals that they receive. This is what the
transfer function does and explains why there are no thresholds on
nodes.
1 Because so much emphasis has been put on explaining the
learning components of the system in this thesis, it may be tempting
to think of SALMON's semantic information as a kind of cheating, but
that is inappropriate. TEMPERAMENTAL programs are, by design, hybrid
systems with the semantic components in no way taking a back seat to
the knowledge contained in the connections. The whole point is that
they can work together to do things neither could do alone, or could
only do with much more difficulty. It would be just as easy to think
of the connectionist components as cheating to make up for what the
semantics cannot do.
27
morning." SALMON would not think of questioning the truth of that
statement, and neither, usually, do we.
8.1 Problems Exhibited by SALMON
Besides the grouping effect already written about, the model
exhibited several other troublesome tendencies. For instance, there
are the spurious connections SALMON cannot discover simply by having
them degrade. For example, whenever an untagged player performs a
flee or tease action, a connection is made not only to the player but
also to the dynamic attributes possessed. One of the dynamic
attributes the player possesses will be the direction he is from the
it. So, an expectation connection is made, say, that looks like this
direction(minusplus) ------> flee
meaning that if an object has the direction(minusplus) attribute than
it should be expected to flee. This is spurious. However, currently
there is no way SALMON could discover this. The problem is that, on
the whole, players perform the flee action nearly 60% of the time
they are enabled to. The frequency function on the weight is then
nearly 60%. The only way SALMON could catch this spurious connection
would be if he had a degradation level above 60%, and such a high
level would simply eliminate too many good connections. Therefore,
SALMON must use the relevancy test to discover these connections.
However, I don't feel the current relevancy test is very general and
TEMPERAMENTAL systems need more sophisticated (and local) ways of
discovering these kinds of connections.
Of course, this really points out a much broader problem.
Namely, there is a great art to defining a dynamic attribute. For
instance, if we had other objects like trees or fire hydrants or
sidewalks or bushes in the playing field they would also have
directions and distances relative to the it. Still, we would not tell
SALMON this because it would throw off all its connection weights.
The programmer must make this choice for SALMON and the choice is
really on pragmatic grounds and not principle. SALMON should be able
to tell when an attribute is relevant for an object without being
spoon-fed good descriptions of the phenomena. Just as SALMON cannot
tell if an attribute is irrelevant despite its high correlation to an
action, he cannot tell if an attribute is not even worth noticing.
The result of this inability to distinguish correctly between
relevant and irrelevant attributes independently of connection
strength can be a bias in SALMON to perform the overall action
tendencies of the simulation at the expense of context. In plain
English, this means SALMON never stood still. Another problem is that
there are many parameters in the model and the quality of the
connections is very sensitive to some of them. Particularly, the
parameter which sets the lowest weight allowed on a connection before
breaking it is crucial. If it is too high nonsense behavior can
result. If it is too low the number of connections increases rapidly
and learning and decision making slow appreciably.
I have already mentioned that the system is sensitive to the
weights in the recency table. If these weights do not reflect the
effect of recency in the actual environment then SALMON will not
learn as effectively. In principle, the model is not too sensitive to
28
the strength of the input signals, as long as the bias is 3 or
greater. However, when input is too large the activation level of the
nodes goes to infinity very quickly. On the positive side, ultimately
it may not be necessary for the programmer to hand-tune the
parameters. When the TEMPERAMENTAL theory is extended to include
feedback from the environment it is likely that the system will be
able to tune its own parameters. Also, even though activation levels
become very high with strong input signals, the activation levels on
SALMON's nodes were usually irreversibly ordered long before signals
were fully spent. In general, the result obtained after 500 or so
signals had been passed produced an ordering that did not change if
signals were allowed to continue propagating until completely spent.
If something like this is generally true of TEMPERAMENTAL systems,
and I think it likely is, then the system can stop computation at
this signaling limit and not necessarily when signals are spent.
Since the limit is low relative to the number of signals that would
be passed if all were allowed to expire, the system can probably
avoid activation levels spiraling towards infinity even if the input
signals are fairly strong. Most likely, the number of signals that
need to be sent is proportional in some way to the number of relevant
connections involved in the computation.
Finally, the nodes in the model compete with each other
primarily indirectly, by gathering connections. I feel there must be
a place in the learning for more enemy or even purely inhibitory
connections. The problem is how to make them. We can intuitively see
that some actions compete with one another even though they do not
disable one another. For instance, the flee and tease actions in a
game of tag somehow compete'' in the sense that they are exclusive
options in a single scenario. But it is not at all obvious to me how
to provide a general heuristic for establishing these enemy
connections and, if necessary, adjusting their weights.
8.2 Areas to develop
Each problem listed above suggests an area of the model which
needs more development. In addition, there are areas not even
addressed by the model that should be tackled. The problem of
discovering spurious connections could be alleviated considerably if
SALMON could learn by experimenting as well as observing. SALMON has
the ability, as he stands, to make predictions about any aspect of
his environment. There should be a way to make him predict, check his
results against what actually happened and then try to discover the
culprit(s) responsible for any incorrect predictions. Of course, the
problem of how to incorporate environmental feedback in learning is
universal in both semantic and connectionist systems.
SALMON's problems arise not only from bad connections, but also
from a relatively naive way of spreading activation. He could
possibly be provided with introspective mechanisms for thinking about
his connections, their meaning, and then noticing and correcting
deficiencies in how activation is spread through them. Along these
lines, an activation level could be provided to each node for each
kind of connection. Thus, it would have a focus activation, a
performance activation and a using activation. Multiple activation
29
levels would provide a smoother interface to the semantics when more
complicated actions have to be performed. The drawback would be that
signals between nodes would have to carry more than just numerical
information. In general, the nodes could move towards being something
like frames with slots for each type of connection. Each slot has
multiple default values, the connections attached to them, and the
weight on the connection represents the strength of the default
assumption by the system. Activation is spread as in a normal
connectionist network and the slots become filled with the highest
activated nodes connected to them.
SALMON should be able to categorize attributes and objects.
Ideally, it should connect up attributes to objects in such a way
that the psychological prototypes investigated by Rosch (1978)
emerge. This would require that a TEMPERAMENTAL system be able to
establish and retract nodes as well as connections. These nodes would
then have to play some role in the reasoning process, perhaps
conducting or filtering activation for their members the way actions
direct the choosing of attributes. Also, frequency tabulations on the
category nodes can help in deciding if a strong connection is,
nevertheless, irrelevant.
TEMPERAMENTAL systems should have goals and priorities that
bias certain actions and direct attention, and hence input. The goals
should compete with one another and establish perspectives in the
system. They should help in organizing the categories discussed in
the previous paragraph and the organization should support planning.
Incorporating goals will probably require meta-connections
(connections to connections) and defining types'' for groups of
connections that can be discovered and classified. The system could
then activate the type'' just as if it were another node, thus
bringing into prominence the connections associated with it. Just as
semantic procedures are associated with action nodes, learned
parameters would be associated with meta-connection nodes and become
dominant when the node is active. This is all still very speculative,
though.
The game of tag would be just one environment out of many a
full TEMPERAMENTAL system experienced. Upon entering or considering
an environment, the system would need to "crystallize" the
appropriate set of responses. The effect would be analogous to
calling up a script, but the process would be analogous to having a
fluid super-saturated by many elements and knowing the proper way of
stirring up the solution so that just the proper one falls out. This
may be as difficult as it sounds but meta-connections may be the key.
SALMON uses its dynamic attributes to react inside its
environment, but it does not have any idea that the attributes
themselves are systematically related. For instance, the attributes
distance(1,3) and distance(3,5) are just two nodes to SALMON. It has
no concept of before or after for them, and consequently could never
purposefully move from distance(1,3) to distance(3,5). Heuristics for
organizing spatial and other attributes systematically through
connections need to be developed.
Overall, SALMON was a learning experience, not a technological
or theoretical advance. As it stands, neither SALMON nor the
30
TEMPERAMENTAL method are either useful nor theoretically significant.
However, there is also much promise for the system. The success of
SALMON in his domain, although not perfect, was encouraging. The
problems that occurred are problems that were anticipated, and I do
not think their solutions entail significant revisions to the model
as it stands but rather an expansion of its capabilities into a
larger domain of mentality.
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