Homeostasis and soft robotics in the design of feeling machines

Attempts to create machines that behave intelligently often conceptualize intelligence as the ability to achieve goals, leaving unanswered a crucial question: whose goals? In a dynamic and unpredictable world, an intelligent agent should hold its own meta-goal of self-preservation, like living organisms whose survival relies on homeostasis: the regulation of body states aimed at maintaining conditions compatible with life. In organisms capable...