In
artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computer, computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of re ...
(AI), anticipation occurs when an
agent
Agent may refer to:
Espionage, investigation, and law
*, spies or intelligence officers
* Law of agency, laws involving a person authorized to act on behalf of another
** Agent of record, a person with a contractual agreement with an insuran ...
makes decisions based on its explicit beliefs about the future. More broadly, "anticipation" can also refer to the ability to act in appropriate ways that take future events into account, without necessarily explicitly possessing a model of the future events.
The concept stays in contrast to the reactive paradigm, which is not able to predict future system states.
[{{cite book, author1=Giovanni Pezzulo, author2=Martin V. Butz, author3=Cristiano Castelfranchi, title=The Challenge of Anticipation: A Unifying Framework for the Analysis and Design of Artificial Cognitive Systems, url=https://books.google.com/books?id=v3NqCQAAQBAJ&pg=PA6, date=25 September 2008, publisher=Springer, isbn=978-3-540-87702-8, pages=6]
In AI
An agent employing anticipation would try to predict the future state of the environment (weather in this case) and make use of the predictions in the decision making. For example,
If the sky is cloudy and the air pressure is low,
it will probably rain soon
so take the umbrella with you.
Otherwise
leave the umbrella home.
These rules explicitly take into account possible future events.
In 1985,
Robert Rosen defined an anticipatory system as follows:
:A system containing a predictive model of itself and/or its environment,
:which allows it to change state at an instant in accord
:with the model's predictions pertaining to a later instant.
To some extent, Rosen's definition of anticipation applies to any system incorporating
machine learning
Machine learning (ML) is a field of study in artificial intelligence concerned with the development and study of Computational statistics, statistical algorithms that can learn from data and generalise to unseen data, and thus perform Task ( ...
. At issue is how much of a system's behaviour should or indeed can be determined by reasoning over dedicated representations, how much by on-line
planning
Planning is the process of thinking regarding the activities required to achieve a desired goal. Planning is based on foresight, the fundamental capacity for mental time travel. Some researchers regard the evolution of forethought - the cap ...
, and how much must be provided by the system's designers.
In animals
Humans can make decisions based on explicit beliefs about the future. More broadly, animals can act in appropriate ways that take future events into account, although they may not necessarily have an explicit cognitive model of the future; evolution may have shaped simpler systemic features that result in adaptive anticipatory behavior in a narrow domain. For example, hibernation is anticipatory behavior, but does not appear to be driven by a cognitive model of the future.
[Riegler, A. (2001, June). The role of anticipation in cognition. In AIP Conference Proceedings (Vol. 573, No. 1, pp. 534-541). AIP.]
See also
*
Action selection
Action selection is a way of characterizing the most basic problem of intelligent systems: what to do next. In artificial intelligence and computational cognitive science, "the action selection problem" is typically associated with intelligent ...
*
Cognition
Cognition is the "mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses". It encompasses all aspects of intellectual functions and processes such as: perception, attention, thought, ...
*
Dynamic planning
* The
History of artificial intelligence
The history of artificial intelligence ( AI) began in antiquity, with myths, stories, and rumors of artificial beings endowed with intelligence or consciousness by master craftsmen. The study of logic and formal reasoning from antiquity to t ...
*
MindRACES
*
Nature and nurture
Nature versus nurture is a long-standing debate in biology and society about the relative influence on human beings of their genetic inheritance (nature) and the environmental conditions of their development ( nurture). The alliterative expression ...
* The
Physical symbol system
A physical symbol system (also called a formal system) takes physical patterns (symbols), combining them into structures (expressions) and manipulating them (using processes) to produce new expressions.
The physical symbol system hypothesis (PSSH ...
hypothesis
*
Strong AI
*
Robert Rosen
*
Teleonomy
Teleonomy is the quality of apparent purposefulness and of goal-directedness of structures and functions in living organisms brought about by natural processes like natural selection. The term derives from two Greek words, τέλος, from τελε ...
References
External links
''MindRACES: From Reactive to Anticipatory Cognitive Embodied Systems'', 2004
Philosophy of artificial intelligence