An egocentric approach to machine intelligence

Intimate to the functioning and behavior of intelligent systems is the manner in which information is represented internally. The conventional approach to intelligent system design assumes a particular bias in the manner by which this information is represented. Typically, this is characterized by an "abstract" or "objective" design methodology which holds that intelligence is not a function of the physical nature of the system. Such an approach suffers from several shortcomings, most notably problems relating to scaling and complexity. Recent physiological research, however, has demonstrated that physical bodily form is a fundamental building block in the organization of mammalian cortical structures. Consequently, this article explores such a biologically motivated "subjective" or "egocentric" approach to system design, and demonstrates its utility in a simple robot arm control problem.