The Theory of Mind Utility: Formal Specification of a Mentalizing Mechanism
Researchers have introduced the Theory of Mind Utility (ToM-U), a formal framework for understanding how agents infer the beliefs of others. ToM-U constructs Local Epistemic World Models (LEWMs) to represent agents and their epistemic relationships, evaluating candidate models against observed behavior. This approach differs from existing methods by deriving belief states rather than presupposing them and offers falsifiable predictions about mentalizing failures. AI