Artificial Agency Requires Attention: The Case of Intentional Action

Abstract

What does it mean to build an artificial agent? In prior work, we have argued at length that the promise of AI introduced into our social milieu calls for a rethinking of the question. We have claimed that agency of the form that all of us naturally recognize requires consciousness to support reasons-responsive choice. In this short paper, we further claim that consciousness, or something close enough, is often necessary for intentional action as well, and explore the connection between them through thought experiments and computational modeling.

Publication
In AAAI 2019 Spring Symposium on Towards Conscious AI Systems
Will Bridewell
Will Bridewell
Research Scientist in Artificial Intelligence

My research interests include the relationship between attention, cognition, and intentional action.