New architectures for constructed complex systems

This paper is an overview of our research program in intelligent systems. Our object of study is constructed complex systems, which are software and hardware systems mediated or managed by computers. We describe how biological systems provide stiff competition for constructed complex systems in the areas of autonomy and intelligence, robustness, adaptability, and communication. We describe our computationally reflective integration infrastructure, called ‘wrappings', and show how it can provide many of the necessary flexibilities. We also describe two directions of research in computational semiotics, which for us means the study of the use of symbols by computing systems. We describe our ‘conceptual categories', which are a method of knowledge representation that supports these flexibilities, and some new results on symbol systems, which leads to some new mathematical questions about what can be represented in formal systems and how they can be extended automatically. These are then combined to describe our architecture, which we are currently in the process of implementing.