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Melanie Mitchell’s “Self-Awareness and Control in Decentralized Systems”. Synopsis, As Told By Chris Damm, March 10, 2009. Self-Awareness in the Immune System. Concepts of Affinity Maturation and Diffuse Feedback.
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Melanie Mitchell’s “Self-Awareness and Control in Decentralized Systems” Synopsis, As Told By Chris Damm, March 10, 2009
Self-Awareness in the Immune System Concepts of Affinity Maturation and Diffuse Feedback
Immune System Follows “Affinity Maturation” to Identify and Eradicate (Target) Pathogens • Lymphocytes become selective in targeting pathogens • Each searches for particular pathogen shapes and subsequently secretes/binds antibody molecules if a match is found. • Activated lymphocyte returns to node and reproduces (with some mutations). • Approximately One Hundred Million lymphocytes “turn over” per day, thus high P for match to foreign pathogens. Process repeats.
Diffuse Feedback Prevents Excessive Friendly Fire • Process of attacking pathogens also causes harm to self (body tissue). Three types of molecules signal the status: • Harm attributed to pathogens • Successful killing of pathogens • Self-harm caused by immune system (inflammation, etc.)
Self-Awareness in Ant Colonies Foraging and Adaptive Allocation of Resources
Foraging for Pheromones • Individual ants start food search randomly (in different directions). • If encounter food, leave pheremone trail. • If encounter trail, then follow. • If find food, add own pheremone to trail. • Thus, paths with recent food success have stronger scent.
Adaptive Task Allocation • Four task types: • foraging, maintenance, patrol, garbage duty • Ant may switch tasks through interaction with others that perform other duties: • “Handy man” ant encounters many foragers returning with seeds, switches to foraging.
Principles of Self Awareness and Control • Information encoded in statistical distribution or dynamics of the system • Distribution of ants on trails or given tasks • Continually-changing lymphocytes irt viruses • Use of randomness and probabilities • Searches performed in parallel threads • Continual bottom-up and top-down (expectation/bias-driven) interplay
Relevance/Applicability in AI System Design (Implications) • Perception is decentralized, redundant, diverse, and fluid. • Interplay of bottom-up (environmentally driven) approaches and top-down modes • Perceptual process shifts, over time, from highly random, bottom-up to more-focused. • Must have means of self-watching (monitoring own state and progress).