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{
    "pk": 49214,
    "title": "Trade-Offs Between Tasks Induced by Capacity Constraints Bound the Scope of Intelligence",
    "subtitle": null,
    "abstract": "A core challenge in cognitive science is understanding the barriers to intelligence and the circumstances that favor cognitive specialization. General intelligence requires a cognitive architecture that is successful across tasks. However, improving an architecture for a given task is often observed to hinder performance on others. Although trade-offs between tasks are a recurring element of explanations in cognitive science, they have received little direct theoretical attention. We present a formal framework that provides a principled understanding of when trade-offs emerge. In particular, we build on recent advances in applying rate-distortion theory to reinforcement learning. This allows us to formalize the representational capacity an agent can call upon in approaching tasks in terms of information. We find trade-offs occur when components of a task conflict in ways that cannot be easily coarse-grained by the agent's encoding scheme. Further, cognition may be general, specialized, or implement a coverall strategy, depending on conditions.",
    "language": "eng",
    "license": {
        "name": "",
        "short_name": "",
        "text": null,
        "url": ""
    },
    "keywords": [
        {
            "word": "Artificial Intelligence; Biology; Computer Science; Psychology; Animal cognition; Cognitive architectures; Evolution; Representation; Computational Modeling"
        }
    ],
    "section": "Papers with Oral Presentation",
    "is_remote": true,
    "remote_url": "https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7hf5p1ht",
    "frozenauthors": [
        {
            "first_name": "Cameron",
            "middle_name": "Rouse",
            "last_name": "Turner",
            "name_suffix": "",
            "institution": "Princeton University",
            "department": ""
        },
        {
            "first_name": "Dilip",
            "middle_name": "",
            "last_name": "Arumugam",
            "name_suffix": "",
            "institution": "Princeton University",
            "department": ""
        },
        {
            "first_name": "Logan",
            "middle_name": "Richard",
            "last_name": "Nelson",
            "name_suffix": "",
            "institution": "Princeton University",
            "department": ""
        },
        {
            "first_name": "Tom",
            "middle_name": "",
            "last_name": "Griffiths",
            "name_suffix": "",
            "institution": "Princeton University",
            "department": ""
        }
    ],
    "date_submitted": null,
    "date_accepted": null,
    "date_published": "2025-01-01T18:00:00Z",
    "render_galley": null,
    "galleys": [
        {
            "label": "PDF",
            "type": "pdf",
            "path": "https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/49214/galley/37175/download/"
        },
        {
            "label": "PDF",
            "type": "pdf",
            "path": "https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/49214/galley/38720/download/"
        }
    ]
}