[aqsalose]

The obvious caveat: this is quite far away from my field of expertise. Doubly so, because I'm not an expert in neural net ML and neither in cognitive science. So take this with spoonful of salt. But anyhow, I don't like the word "imagine" here. It seems suggest cognitive capabilities that their model probably does not have.

As far as I do understand the papers, their model builds (in unsupervised fashion which sounds very cool) an internal simulation of the agent's environment and runs it to evaluate different actions, so I can see why they'd call it imagination / planning, because that's the obvious inspiration for the model and so it sort of fits. But in common parlance, "imagination" [1] also means something that relatively conscious agents do, often with originality, and it does not seem that their models are yet that advanced.

I'm tempted to compare the choice of terminology to DeepDream, which is not exactly a replication of the mental states associated with human sleep, either.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imagination

[PeterisP]

Can you elaborate on what qualitative difference do you see between imagination-as-you-understand-it and an internal simulation of a nonexistent (maybe future, maybe never happening) state of an agent's environment or inputs? There's an obvious quantitative difference - their environment is much simpler than ours, and their "imagination" is bound to imagining the near future (unlike us), but conceptually, where do you see the biggest difference?

Originality seems not to be the boundary, since even this simple model seems to imagine world states that they never saw, never will see, and possibly even aren't possible in their environment, i.e. they are "original" in some sense.

If I look at the common understanding of "imagination" and myself, what can I imagine? I can imagine 'what-if' scenarios of my future, e.g. what could be the outcome if I do this or that, or if something particular happens; I can imagine scenarios of my past, i.e., "replay" memories; I can imagine counterfactual scenarios that never happened and never will; I can imagine various senses - i.e. how a particular melody (which I'm "constructing" right now, iteratively, with the help of this imagination to guide my iterations) might sound when played in a band, or how something I'm drawing might look like when it's completed - all of this seems different variations on essentially the same thing, which is an internal simulation (model) generating data about various hypothetical states.

This might be used to evaluate different actions, but it might also be used to simply experience these states (i.e. daydream) or do something else - that's more of a question on how the agent would want to use the "imagination module", not a particular property of the imagination/internal simulation model itself.

[ajarmst]

Yeah. I doubt that their machine can "imagine no possessions", or that it would have much utility even if it could.

[landon32]

You're right, but I think this paper is the first step on a (potentially very, very) very long road to building machines that could "imagine no possessions"

[Cybiote]

I agree with you. I remember skimming the paper and finding it interesting but wondered if selecting that term might set too many imaginations running. I don't have a problem with their calling it imagination, though.

But consider that many would object if I stated jumping spiders have an active imagination. Yet, this is not far fetched if you accept that imagination includes planning against a learned model.

Insects are known to be capable of learning. They need to be able to remember routes or learn which locations to prefer or avoid. Jumping spiders are known for their ability to carry out and hold complex plans in their head. Though a form of imagination, most would hesitate to call it that.

(1) http://science.sciencemag.org/content/355/6327/833, https://youtu.be/exsrX6qsKkA?t=44s