Metaphysics and Epistemology Group (Tuesday - Week 4, TT26)

Abstract: Our capacity for reflection allows us to introspect on our thoughts and preferences, engage in metacognition, and evaluate our progress on projects while reconfiguring our approach as needed. Despite being central to human intelligence, reflection has received marginal attention in developing artificial intelligence. There are burgeoning signs of an artificial equivalent of our capacity for reflection. To illustrate, so-called self-attention mechanisms and metacognition in Large Language Models, meta-reinformecemnt learning moduls, and self-improving systems can each be argued to be examples of systems that possess the capacity for reflection. However, in each case, the capacity is rigid in its scope compared our human capacity, and it developed as a side-effect of pursuing other goals. To date, no explicit attention has been directed at artificially replicating this central element of human intelligence. The paper argues that a general capacity for reflection is key to bringing AI to the next level.

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