Experiments in Artificial Theory of Mind: From Safety to Story-Telling

2018

Theory of mind is the term given by philosophers and psychologists for the ability to form a predictive model of self and others. In this paper we focus on synthetic models of theory of mind. We contend firstly that such models—especially when tested experimentally—can provide useful insights into cognition, and secondly that artificial theory of mind can provide intelligent robots with powerful new capabilities, in particular social intelligence for human-robot interaction. This paper advances the hypothesis that simulation-based internal models offer a powerful and realisable, theory-driven basis for artificial theory of mind. Proposed as a computational model of the simulation theory of …