Artificial Intelligence techniques such as agent-based modeling and probabilistic reasoning have shown promise in modeling complex biological systems and testing ecological hypotheses through simulation. We develop an agent-based model of Arctic foxes from Medniy Island while utilizing Probabilistic Graphical Models to capture the conditional dependencies between the random variables. Such models provide valuable insights in analyzing factors behind catastrophic degradation of this population and in revealing evolutionary mechanisms of its persistence in high-density environment. Using empirical data from studies in Medniy Island, we create a realistic model of Arctic foxes as agents, and study their survival and population dynamics under a variety of conditions.

Roderick Bloem TU Graz Austria A prominent problem in artificial intelligence and machine learning is the safe exploration of an environment. In particular, reinforcement learning is a wellknown technique to determine optimal policies for complicated dynamic systems, but suffers from the fact that such policies may induce harmful behavior. We present the concept of a shield that forces decision-making to provably adhere to safety requirements with high probability. Our method exploits the inherent uncertainties in scenarios given by Markov decision processes. We present a method to compute probabilities of decision making regarding temporal logic constraints. We use that information to realize a shield that--when applied to a reinforcement learning algorithm--ensures (near-)optimal behavior both for the safety constraints and for the actual learning objective. In our experiments, we show on the arcade game PAC-MAN that the learning efficiency increases as the learning needs orders of magnitude fewer episodes. We show tradeoffs between sufficient progress in exploration of the environment and ensuring strict safety.

Imitation from observation (IfO) is the problem of learning directly from state-only demonstrations without having access to the demonstrator's actions. The lack of action information both distinguishes IfO from most of the literature in imitation learning, and also sets it apart as a method that may enable agents to learn from large set of previously inapplicable resources such as internet videos. In this paper, we propose both a general framework for IfO approaches and propose a new IfO approach based on generative adversarial networks called generative adversarial imitation from observation (GAIfO). We demonstrate that this approach performs comparably to classical imitation learning approaches (which have access to the demonstrator's actions) and significantly outperforms existing imitation from observation methods in high-dimensional simulation environments.

Evidence in probabilistic reasoning may be `hard' or `soft', that is, it may be of yes/no form, or it may involve a strength of belief, in the unit interval [0,1]. Reasoning with soft, $[0,1]$-valued evidence is important in many situations but may lead to different, confusing interpretations. This paper intends to bring more mathematical clarity to the field by shifting the existing focus from specification of soft evidence to accomodation of soft evidence. There are two main approaches, known as Jeffrey's rule and Pearl's method, which give different outcomes on soft evidence. This paper describes these two approaches as different ways of updating with soft evidence, highlighting their differences, similarities and applications. This account is based on a novel channel-based approach to Bayesian probability. Proper understanding of these two update mechanisms is highly relevant for inference, decision tools and probabilistic programming languages.

By and large the behavior of stochastic gradient is regarded as a challenging problem, and it is often presented in the framework of statistical machine learning. This paper offers a novel view on the analysis of on-line models of learning that arises when dealing with a generalized version of stochastic gradient that is based on dissipative dynamics. In order to face the complex evolution of these models, a systematic treatment is proposed which is based on energy balance equations that are derived by means of the Caldirola-Kanai (CK) Hamiltonian. According to these equations, learning can be regarded as an ordering process which corresponds with the decrement of the loss function. Finally, the main results established in this paper is that in the case of quasi-periodic environments, where the pattern novelty is progressively limited as time goes by, the system dynamics yields an asymptotically consistent solution in the weight space, that is the solution maps similar patterns to the same decision.

We introduce "Talk The Walk", the first large-scale dialogue dataset grounded in action and perception. The task involves two agents (a "guide" and a "tourist") that communicate via natural language in order to achieve a common goal: having the tourist navigate to a given target location. The task and dataset, which are described in detail, are challenging and their full solution is an open problem that we pose to the community. We (i) focus on the task of tourist localization and develop the novel Masked Attention for Spatial Convolutions (MASC) mechanism that allows for grounding tourist utterances into the guide's map, (ii) show it yields significant improvements for both emergent and natural language communication, and (iii) using this method, we establish non-trivial baselines on the full task.

Earlier this year, concerns over the development of autonomous military systems -- essentially AI-driven machinery capable of making battlefield decisions, including the selection of targets -- were once again the center of attention at a United Nations meeting in Geneva. "Where is the line going to be drawn between human and machine decision-making?" Paul Scharre, director of the Technology and National Security Program at the Center for a New American Security in Washington, D.C., told Time magazine. "Are we going to be willing to delegate lethal authority to the machine?" "Malicious computer programs that could be described as'intelligent autonomous agents' are what steal people's data."

Have you put a bet on the FIFA World Cup? If yes, the chances are you've made a pretty educated guess, right? You know which team has the strongest players or most favourable odds. Or maybe you've put some cash on your country's team, (which normally I'd avoid England, but given their recent performance, I could be wrong to!) Either way, you might be best casting your bets in line with San Francisco based Unanimous AI. They use a technology called Swarm AI – algorithms modelled on swarms in nature that amplifies human intelligence.

Humans use signs, e.g., sentences in a spoken language, for communication and thought. Hence, symbol systems like language are crucial for our communication with other agents and adaptation to our real-world environment. The symbol systems we use in our human society adaptively and dynamically change over time. In the context of artificial intelligence (AI) and cognitive systems, the symbol grounding problem has been regarded as one of the central problems related to {\it symbols}. However, the symbol grounding problem was originally posed to connect symbolic AI and sensorimotor information and did not consider many interdisciplinary phenomena in human communication and dynamic symbol systems in our society, which semiotics considered. In this paper, we focus on the symbol emergence problem, addressing not only cognitive dynamics but also the dynamics of symbol systems in society, rather than the symbol grounding problem. We first introduce the notion of a symbol in semiotics from the humanities, to leave the very narrow idea of symbols in symbolic AI. Furthermore, over the years, it became more and more clear that symbol emergence has to be regarded as a multifaceted problem. Therefore, secondly, we review the history of the symbol emergence problem in different fields, including both biological and artificial systems, showing their mutual relations. We summarize the discussion and provide an integrative viewpoint and comprehensive overview of symbol emergence in cognitive systems. Additionally, we describe the challenges facing the creation of cognitive systems that can be part of symbol emergence systems.

Human moving path is an important feature in architecture design. By studying the path, architects know where to arrange the basic elements (e.g. structures, glasses, furniture, etc.) in the space. This paper presents SimArch, a multi-agent system for human moving path simulation. It involves a behavior model built by using a Markov Decision Process. The model simulates human mental states, target range detection, and collision prediction when agents are on the floor, in a particular small gallery, looking at an exhibit, or leaving the floor. It also models different kinds of human characteristics by assigning different transition probabilities. A modified weighted A* search algorithm quickly plans the sub-optimal path of the agents. In an experiment, SimArch takes a series of preprocessed floorplans as inputs, simulates the moving path, and outputs a density map for evaluation. The density map provides the prediction that how likely a person will occur in a location. A following discussion illustrates how architects can use the density map to improve their floorplan design.