Opinion The Ouroboros Model, Proposal for Self-Organizing General Cognition Substantiated Knud Thomsen Paul Scherrer Institut, 5232 Villigen-PSI, Switzerland;
[email protected] Abstract: The Ouroboros Model has been proposed as a biologically-inspired comprehensive cog- nitive architecture for general intelligence, comprising natural and artificial manifestations. The approach addresses very diverse fundamental desiderata of research in natural cognition and also artificial intelligence, AI. Here, it is described how the postulated structures have met with supportive evidence over recent years. The associated hypothesized processes could remedy pressing problems plaguing many, and even the most powerful current implementations of AI, including in particular deep neural networks. Some selected recent findings from very different fields are summoned, which illustrate the status and substantiate the proposal. Keywords: biological inspired cognitive architecture; deep neural networks; auto-catalytic genera- tion; self-reflective control; efficiency; robustness; common sense; transparency; trustworthiness 1. Introduction The Ouroboros Model was conceptualized as the basic structure for efficient self- Citation: Thomsen, K. The organizing cognition some time ago [1]. The intention there was to explain facets of natural Ouroboros Model, Proposal for cognition and to derive design recommendations for general artificial intelligence at the Self-Organizing General Cognition same time. Whereas it has been argued based on general considerations that this approach Substantiated. AI 2021, 2, 89–105. can shed some light on a wide variety of topics and problems, in terms of specific and https://doi.org/10.3390/ai2010007 comprehensive implementations the Ouroboros Model still is severely underexplored. Beyond some very rudimentary realizations in safeguards and safety installations, no Academic Editors: Rafał Drezewski˙ actual artificially intelligent system of this type has been built so far.