Disentangled Representations for Causal Cognition (2407.00744v1)

Abstract: Complex adaptive agents consistently achieve their goals by solving problems that seem to require an understanding of causal information, information pertaining to the causal relationships that exist among elements of combined agent-environment systems. Causal cognition studies and describes the main characteristics of causal learning and reasoning in human and non-human animals, offering a conceptual framework to discuss cognitive performances based on the level of apparent causal understanding of a task. Despite the use of formal intervention-based models of causality, including causal Bayesian networks, psychological and behavioural research on causal cognition does not yet offer a computational account that operationalises how agents acquire a causal understanding of the world. Machine and reinforcement learning research on causality, especially involving disentanglement as a candidate process to build causal representations, represent on the one hand a concrete attempt at designing causal artificial agents that can shed light on the inner workings of natural causal cognition. In this work, we connect these two areas of research to build a unifying framework for causal cognition that will offer a computational perspective on studies of animal cognition, and provide insights in the development of new algorithms for causal reinforcement learning in AI.

Disentangled Representations for Causal Cognition

The paper "Disentangled Representations for Causal Cognition" by Filippo Torresan and Manuel Baltieri aims to establish a unifying framework for causal cognition. This framework integrates research from diverse fields such as psychology, animal cognition, and AI, particularly focusing on causal reinforcement learning.

Overview

The paper conceptualizes causal cognition as the ability of adaptive agents to understand and utilize causal information from their environment. It underscores the importance of understanding how such agents, whether human, non-human, or artificial, learn and reason about causality. The central thesis is to harness advancements in causal machine learning and disentangled representations to better explain and model causal cognition.

Explicitness as Disentanglement

The paper introduces the concept of explicitness of causal representations, relating it to degrees of disentanglement. Disentanglement is defined as the ability to learn independent, high-level factors from observed data. The authors propose that explicitness in causal cognition can be understood through varying degrees of disentanglement:

• Weak Disentanglement: These models capture independent causal factors but might not model the causal mechanisms among them. Weak disentanglement represents a lower degree of explicitness, suitable for traditional associative learning frameworks.
• Strong Disentanglement: These models not only capture the causal factors but also the causal mechanisms that interrelate them. Strong disentanglement represents a higher degree of explicitness and is hypothesized to be more aligned with true causal understanding.

Sources of Causal Information

The authors elaborate on three primary sources of causal information:

• Egocentric: Information derived from the agent's own actions and their consequences.
• Social: Information derived from observing the actions and consequences of others.
• Natural: Information derived from the environment, not directly related to agent-specific actions.

Integration of Causal Information

Integration of causal information from multiple sources is identified as a critical aspect of robust causal cognition. The authors classify integration strategies as combinations of different pairs of causal information (e.g., egocentric + social, egocentric + natural) and propose that complete integration involves the fusion of all three sources of causal information.

Comparative Analysis

The paper performs a comparative analysis of causal cognition and causal reinforcement learning, situating various agent behaviors along a spectrum from low to high explicitness:

• Low Explicitness: Traditional RL models that operate on dense correlations without discerning causal relationships.
• Medium Explicitness: Agents that employ weak disentanglement, identifying independent causal factors but lacking inter-factor causal mechanism understanding.
• High Explicitness: Agents exhibiting causal insight, characterized by strong disentanglement, and capable of novel problem-solving through flexible application of learned causal information.

The authors highlight that high explicitness is analogous to cognitive flexibility in animal studies. For example, certain primates and birds demonstrate the capacity to infer causal relationships and use tools to achieve goals, suggesting a higher degree of causal cognition.

Implications and Future Directions

The framework proposed has several implications:

1. Computational Models: The framework paves the way for developing more refined computational models that can emulate the causal learning processes observed in animals and humans.
2. AI Algorithms: By incorporating strong disentanglement and causal reasoning, AI algorithms can be made more robust, enabling better generalization and adaptability in complex environments.
3. Benchmarking: The authors suggest employing benchmarks based on animal cognition tasks to evaluate the causal understanding capabilities of artificial agents.

Conclusion

"Disentangled Representations for Causal Cognition" provides a robust theoretical and computational framework that bridges the gap between natural and artificial causal cognition. By leveraging the concepts of disentanglement and causal reinforcement learning, the paper lays the groundwork for future research to develop more nuanced and adaptive intelligent systems that mirror sophisticated causal reasoning observed in biological agents. The proposed integration strategies and benchmarking methodologies offer a practical roadmap for evaluating and enhancing the causal cognition capabilities of AI systems.