Symbiosis is a physiological phenomenon where organisms of different species develop social interdependencies through partnerships. Artificial agents need mechanisms to build their capacity to develop symbiotic relationships. In this paper, we discuss two pillars for these mechanisms: machine education (ME) and bi-directional communication. ME is a new revolution in artificial intelligence (AI) which aims at structuring the learning journey of AI-enabled autonomous systems. In addition to the design of a systematic curriculum, ME embeds the body of knowledge necessary for the social integration of AI, such as ethics, moral values and trust, into the evolutionary design and learning of the AI. ME promises to equip AI with skills to be ready to develop logic-based symbiosis with humans and in a manner that leads to a trustworthy and effective steady-state through the mental interaction between humans and autonomy; a state we name symbiomemesis to differentiate it from ecological symbiosis. The second pillar, bi-directional communication as a discourse enables information to flow between the AI systems and humans. We combine machine education and communication theory as the two prerequisites for symbiosis of AI agents and present a formal computational model of symbiomemesis to enable symbiotic human-autonomy teaming.

This article is part of the theme issue ‘Towards symbiotic autonomous systems’.

共生是一种生理现象，不同物种的生物通过伙伴关系发展社会相互依存关系。人工代理需要机制来建立其发展共生关系的能力。在本文中，我们讨论了这些机制的两个支柱：机器教育 (ME) 和双向通信。ME 是人工智能 (AI) 的一场新革命，旨在构建支持 AI 的自主系统的学习之旅。除了系统课程的设计，ME 还将人工智能社会融合所需的知识体系，如伦理、道德价值观和信任，嵌入到人工智能的进化设计和学习中。ME 承诺为 AI 配备技能，以准备与人类发展基于逻辑的共生关系，并通过人类与自主之间的心理互动以一种可信赖且有效的稳定状态的方式；我们命名的一个州共生学将其与生态共生区分开来。第二个支柱，作为话语的双向通信使信息能够在人工智能系统和人类之间流动。我们将机器教育和通信理论作为 AI 代理共生的两个先决条件，并提出了一个正式的共生计算模型，以实现共生的人类-自主团队。

这篇文章是主题问题“走向共生自治系统”的一部分。