Protocol desiderata¶

Cybernetic agency¶

We assume that the world is of interest to agents: in general, agents may be interested in choosing their actions in such a manner as to regulate the probability distribution of their future observations, the probability distributions of future observations of other agents, and in general the probability distribution of inferred latent state of the world - which requires observing the world and building an internal model of it in order to better predict how actions may affect it. This capacity - to observe, record, model, predict, act, and thereby regulate - we refer to as cybernetic agency. Note in particular that many actions may simply be oriented towards crafting a better model, in expectation of said model being useful for prediction of the results of future actions.

flowchart LR
      OldWorld["Old World"]
      Observe
      Model
      Predict
      Desire
      Act
      NewWorld["New World"]
      OldWorld --> Observe
      Observe --> Model
      Model --> Predict
      Desire --> Predict
      Predict --> Act
      Act --> NewWorld
      NewWorld --Next timestep--> OldWorld

Coordination¶

We assume that - perhaps in order to increase their degree of cybernetic agency - agents may wish to coordinate with other agents, which may include:

• sharing observations with other agents, for improved modeling and prediction
• sharing storage and comptuational resources with other agents (storing data or performing computations upon request)
• coordinating actions which may have causally interdependent effects, especially when the interdependence may be crucial in determining whether the effect upon the world would be desired or not

In a sense, we can understand coordination as composition of cybernetic agency, in that it allows many agents who elect to do so to act "as if" they were one.

We define a protocol as a way to automatically respond to messages, i.e.

flowchart LR
      subgraph Alice
      P_1["Protocol instance 1"]
      I_1["Internal observation and control"]
      end
      subgraph Bob
      P_2["Protocol instance 2"]
      I_2["Internal observation and control"]
      end
      subgraph Charlie
      P_3["Protocol instance 3"]
      I_3["Internal observation and control"]
      end
      I_1 <--> P_1
      I_2 <--> P_2
      I_3 <--> P_3
      P_1 <--> P_2
      P_2 <--> P_3
      P_1 <--> P_3

We define a compositional cybernetic agency protocol as a protocol which allows for all of these functions, without loss of generality. The remainder of this specification document describes the structure of such a protocol.