Agency Is Frame-Dependent
Agency is a system's capacity to steer outcomes toward a goal, and is a
central topic of study across biology, philosophy, cognitive science, and
artificial intelligence. Determining if a system exhibits agency is a
notoriously difficult question: Dennett (1989), for instance, highlights the
puzzle of determining which principles can decide whether a rock, a thermostat,
or a robot each possess agency. We here address this puzzle from the viewpoint
of reinforcement learning by arguing that agency is fundamentally
frame-dependent: Any measurement of a system's agency must be made relative to
a reference frame. We support this claim by presenting a philosophical argument
that each of the essential properties of agency proposed by Barandiaran et al.
(2009) and Moreno (2018) are themselves frame-dependent. We conclude that any
basic science of agency requires frame-dependence, and discuss the implications
of this claim for reinforcement learning.
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David Abel
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André Barreto
admin_assigned
2025-02-10T16:12:50.057Z
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/avatars/d23fd4d654fa490389dd6dfb37c0e834.svg
Andre Barreto
user
andrebarreto
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Michael Bowling
admin_assigned
2025-02-10T16:13:08.978Z
64929b5d53b71f9cf934dcb8
/avatars/462add1d4f423f831481acf53217f900.svg
Michael Bowling
user
Alkaroth
67a97c7542d4d2f92ee57d23
Will Dabney
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Shi Dong
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Steven Hansen
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Anna Harutyunyan
67a97c7542d4d2f92ee57d27
Khimya Khetarpal
67a97c7542d4d2f92ee57d28
Clare Lyle
admin_assigned
2025-02-10T16:13:37.970Z
6313f69d54e6e5d9f0fb9f10
/avatars/12114d479bb6dc394d29f988944f6d47.svg
Clare Lyle
user
justclarifying
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Razvan Pascanu
admin_assigned
2025-02-10T16:13:44.165Z
64b9310403124195cd9778ec
/avatars/57c594d3d0f97d3010b15b6a0806451c.svg
Razvan Pascanu
user
razp
67a97c7542d4d2f92ee57d2a
Georgios Piliouras
67a97c7542d4d2f92ee57d2b
Doina Precup
67a97c7542d4d2f92ee57d2c
Jonathan Richens
67a97c7542d4d2f92ee57d2d
Mark Rowland
67a97c7542d4d2f92ee57d2e
Tom Schaul
67a97c7542d4d2f92ee57d2f
Satinder Singh
Agency Is Frame-Dependent
Agency is a system's capacity to steer outcomes toward a goal, and is a
central topic of study across biology, philosophy, cognitive science, and
artificial intelligence. Determining if a system exhibits agency is a
notoriously difficult question: Dennett (1989), for instance, highlights the
puzzle of determining which principles can decide whether a rock, a thermostat,
or a robot each possess agency. We here address this puzzle from the viewpoint
of reinforcement learning by arguing that agency is fundamentally
frame-dependent: Any measurement of a system's agency must be made relative to
a reference frame. We support this claim by presenting a philosophical argument
that each of the essential properties of agency proposed by Barandiaran et al.
(2009) and Moreno (2018) are themselves frame-dependent. We conclude that any
basic science of agency requires frame-dependence, and discuss the implications
of this claim for reinforcement learning.
reinforcement learning frame-dependent