CABots and Other Neural Agents

The best way to develop a Turing test passing AI is to follow the human model: an embodied agent that functions over a wide range of domains, is a human cognitive model, follows human neural functioning and learns. These properties will endow the agent with the deep semantics required to pass the test. An embodied agent functioning over a wide range of domains is needed to be exposed to and learn the semantics of those domains. Following human cognitive and neural functioning simplifies the search for sufficiently sophisticated mechanisms by reusing mechanisms that are already known to be sufficient. This is a difficult task, but initial steps have been taken, including the development of CABots, neural agents embodied in virtual environments. Several different CABots run in response to natural language commands, performing a cognitive mapping task. These initial agents are quite some distance from passing the test, and to develop an agent that passes will require broad collaboration. Several next steps are proposed, and these could be integrated using, for instance, the Platforms from the Human Brain Project as a foundation for this collaboration.