Semiotic Dynamics for Embodied Agents

• Authors: Luc Steels
• Venue: IEEE Intelligent Systems
• Year: 2006

Semiotic dynamics involves the processes whereby groups of people or artificial agents collectively invent and negotiate shared semiotic systems, which they use for communication or information organization. Tagging systems (such as Flickr, CiteULike, del.icio.us, orconnotea) offer examples of human semiotic dynamics at work, aided by technologies such as the Internet but also by a new sense of collective action in an increasingly connected world.Semiotic dynamics builds on many earlier AI developments: the insights into and technologiesof semantic networks and knowledge representation from the seventies, the ideas onembodiment and grounding from the late eighties, and the perspective of multiagent systemsfrom the nineties. But all these aspects join together into a new vision on intelligence, with thesocial, collective dynamics of representation-making at the center. These new AIdevelopments don't stand in isolation; they resonate with recent developments in linguistics,psychology, and the mathematical study of networks. This article briefly illustrates the currentstudy of semiotic dynamics, the resulting technologies, and the field's impact on current andfuture intelligent systems applications. This article is part of a special issue on the Future of AI.