2005-02-11Z2011-03-11T08:55:44Zhttp://cogprints.org/id/eprint/3950This item is in the repository with the URL: http://cogprints.org/id/eprint/39502005-02-11ZLogic, self-awareness and self-improvement: The metacognitive loop and the problem of brittlenessThis essay describes a general approach to building perturbation-tolerant autonomous systems, based on the conviction that artificial agents should be able notice when something is amiss, assess the anomaly, and guide a solution into place. We call this basic strategy of self-guided learning the metacognitive loop; it involves the system monitoring, reasoning about, and, when necessary, altering its own decision-making components. In this essay, we (a) argue that equipping agents with a metacognitive loop can help to overcome the brittleness problem, (b) detail the metacognitive loop and its relation to our ongoing work on time-sensitive commonsense reasoning, (c) describe specific, implemented systems whose perturbation tolerance was improved by adding a metacognitive loop, and (d) outline both short-term and long-term research agendas.Dr. Michael L. AndersonProf. Donald R. Perlis