Computational architectures for intelligence and motivation

This paper presents an overview of five years work into computational architectures for intelligence and motivation. The starting point for this research is a generic computational architecture arising from the study of the control state perspective to mind. Variations on this architecture have been used to investigate questions about the nature of autonomy, emergence, belief management and motivation (and other control states) in synthetic agents. A number of different domains have been used, for example simple a-life environments, simulated robotic factories, five-a-side football, Tileworld and the game of Go. Due to the nature and scope of the work not all issues were addressed in any one domain. This raises questions about such endeavours. Given that it may be necessary to apportion fundamental research questions across different projects, can generalised conclusions be justifiably made from this division of research? The suggestion made here is that any such conclusions can only be justified in the light of subsequent integrative research. Current research directions are described in terms of these integrative questions.