Toward a Model of Mind as a Laissez-Faire Economy of Idiots

Abstract

. A learning machine called "The Hayek Machine" is proposed and tested on a simulated Blocks World planning problem. Hayek learns a set of agents from reinforcement. The agents interact in a market economy. A price mechanism is proposed and seen to have three desirable effects. First, the market price learns to estimate Hayek's future reward from using a given agent. Second, the market automatically selects the agent with highest estimate to act next. Third, new agents can enter the market if and only if they have greater expected utility than direct competitors. Hayek learns by gradual accretion of useful agents and elimination of poor ones,and by refinement of its price estimates. Many agents act in consort to solve problems. Our Blocks World (BW) problems, which involve discovering the abstract goal of copying a stack, and necessitate solving Towers of Hanoi-like problems, are far more complex than any BW problems previously addressed by a learning algorithm. Starting from tabula r...