AI and the Sense of Self
This is an incremental philosophical discussion for AI ethics and agent design.
The paper argues for the relevance of the cognitive sense of self in AI agents to address ethical concerns in autonomous decision-making, aiming to inspire research into richer computational models.
After several winters, AI is center-stage once again, with current advances enabling a vast array of AI applications. This renewed wave of AI has brought back to the fore several questions from the past, about philosophical foundations of intelligence and common sense -- predominantly motivated by ethical concerns of AI decision-making. In this paper, we address some of the arguments that led to research interest in intelligent agents, and argue for their relevance even in today's context. Specifically we focus on the cognitive sense of "self" and its role in autonomous decision-making leading to responsible behaviour. The authors hope to make a case for greater research interest in building richer computational models of AI agents with a sense of self.