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 metacognitive strategy


Imagining and building wise machines: The centrality of AI metacognition

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) have produced systems capable of increasingly sophisticated performance on cognitive tasks. However, AI systems still struggle in critical ways: unpredictable and novel environments (robustness), lack of transparency in their reasoning (explainability), challenges in communication and commitment (cooperation), and risks due to potential harmful actions (safety). We argue that these shortcomings stem from one overarching failure: AI systems lack wisdom. Drawing from cognitive and social sciences, we define wisdom as the ability to navigate intractable problems - those that are ambiguous, radically uncertain, novel, chaotic, or computationally explosive - through effective task-level and metacognitive strategies. While AI research has focused on task-level strategies, metacognition - the ability to reflect on and regulate one's thought processes - is underdeveloped in AI systems. In humans, metacognitive strategies such as recognizing the limits of one's knowledge, considering diverse perspectives, and adapting to context are essential for wise decision-making. We propose that integrating metacognitive capabilities into AI systems is crucial for enhancing their robustness, explainability, cooperation, and safety. By focusing on developing wise AI, we suggest an alternative to aligning AI with specific human values - a task fraught with conceptual and practical difficulties. Instead, wise AI systems can thoughtfully navigate complex situations, account for diverse human values, and avoid harmful actions. We discuss potential approaches to building wise AI, including benchmarking metacognitive abilities and training AI systems to employ wise reasoning. Prioritizing metacognition in AI research will lead to systems that act not only intelligently but also wisely in complex, real-world situations.


Modeling e-Learners' Cognitive and Metacognitive Strategy in Comparative Question Solving

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Cognitive and metacognitive strategy had demonstrated a significant role in self-regulated learning (SRL), and an appropriate use of strategies is beneficial to effective learning or question-solving tasks during a human-computer interaction process. This paper proposes a novel method combining Knowledge Map (KM) based data mining technique with Thinking Map (TM) to detect learner's cognitive and metacognitive strategy in the question-solving scenario. In particular, a graph-based mining algorithm is designed to facilitate our proposed method, which can automatically map cognitive strategy to metacognitive strategy with raising abstraction level, and make the cognitive and metacognitive process viewable, which acts like a reverse engineering engine to explain how a learner thinks when solving a question. Additionally, we develop an online learning environment system for participants to learn and record their behaviors. To corroborate the effectiveness of our approach and algorithm, we conduct experiments recruiting 173 postgraduate and undergraduate students, and they were asked to complete a question-solving task, such as "What are similarities and differences between array and pointer?" from "The C Programming Language" course and "What are similarities and differences between packet switching and circuit switching?" from "Computer Network Principle" course. The mined strategies patterns results are encouraging and supported well our proposed method.