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in order to predict the future, and make the link to the past and present.
Three basic elements in the primate social field are the following:
2.1 Ability to remember and learn interactions with others and to build
direct
relationships
: As discussed above the upper limit of the group size was esti-
mated for humans as 150, representing a cognitive limit on the number of
individuals with whom one person can maintain stable relationships, as a
function of brain size. The 'brain' of a software or robotic agent (at least in
terms of storage capacity) can be huge. Thus, agents can have many friends.
2.2 Identifying third-party relationships (relationships among other group
members), ability to remember and learn interaction between others. Since
human communication is dominated by gossiping about other people,
artificial agents talking about other agents seems to be suggested.
2.3 Ability to
understand
others, most elaborated in humans which show com-
plex mechanisms of empathy, biographical reconstruction, and an individ-
ual autobiography. Agents need social skills, ways to figure out what other
agents are doing and the ability to communicate with them.
2.4 Recognition of conspecifics as members in a group hierarchy/social struc-
ture (e.g. structures of kinship, allies, dominance hierarchies, etc.)
3.
Efficient mechanisms of social bonding, either via physical grooming (in
non-human primate societies) or via language and communication in nar-
rativesasefficientwaysof
social bonding
, important for maintaining the
coherence of social groups at different levels of social organization.
4.
Social learning: the capacity to use others as
social tools
(Dautenhahn
1995), via social learning mechanisms with varying degrees of what the
animals learn from each other (cf. social facilitation versus imitation)
We hope that in future work these requirements can be sufficiently addressed in
the construction of socially intelligent
narrative agents
, e.g. socially intelligent
robots, cf. (Dautenhahn & Nehaniv 1998), (Dautenhahn 1999), (Dautenhahn
& Billard 1999), (Dautenhahn & Coles 2000).
Conclusion
Narrative agents as we know them, e.g. humans and other primates, are social
agents, grow up in a society, learning about other agents and how to predict
their behavior. Also, narrative might be at the center of who (we think) we are.
“Our fundamental tactic of self-protection, self-control, and self-definition is
not building dams or spinning webs, but telling stories - and more particularly
