Artificial Immune System Based Cognitive Agent Architecture for Email

Classification
Kashif Saleem, Wajahat Mehmood Qazi

Abstract: With increasing interest of researchers in the study

of cross discipline areas, different advancements were made in

computer science. Different models were proposed which were
derived from the human biological models. In this paper,
artificial immune system based cognitive architecture for
email classification is proposed. The purpose of this agent is
to classify emails into different categories with the help of
previous knowledge learnt from its prior encounters. In this
cognitive agent perceptual learning occurs with the help of
artificial immune system which consists of B cells. By using
AIS, perception learning can be more optimized because it
maintains the previous encounters and learns from them. Also
it is self-organizing system requires no extra optimization of
system parameters.
Keywords: Artificial immune systems, cognition, global work
space, perception learning, cognitive agent

II. BIOLOGICAL IMMUNE SYSTEM

Biological Immune System is one of the important systems in
the human body. Its major responsibility is to protect the body
from the external agents known as antigens. There are two
types of immune systems that act in human body.
a. Innate Immune System: It is basic immune
system exist in the human body by birth. It
provides the urgent response against antigen
to neutralize the threat. However, it is not
possible for this system to process every
antigen.
b. Adaptive Immune System: This system is
advance than innate immune system and
develops with the passage of time. It first
processes the antigen and then provides the
response accordingly. It also has memory in
which it stores the responses for future use.

I. INTRODUCTION
According to Stan Franklin, a cognitive agent is the
autonomous software agent having cognitive features like
multiple senses, perception, concept formulation, and
attention, memory (short term & long term), learning and
emotions etc. These cognitive agents play a vital role in
understanding the human cognition mainly the consciousness
[1].
In recent advancements, scientist are trying to develop the
machines, either in term of software or hardware which
depicts human like behavior such as cognition, emotions,
learning etc. Different researchers develop models in
computer science which are based on human biological
models. One of such models is artificial immune system.
Artificial Immune Systems (AIS) are based on the biological
immune system. The major function of biological immune
system is the defense of body from external agents known as
antigens. Inspired from biological immune system, artificial
immune system are emerged during the past decade [2].
The rest of the paper is discussed as follows: Section II
contains the brief description of biological immune system
while in section III overview of the artificial immune system
is presented. Proposed cognitive architecture for email
classification is discussed in section IV. Section V highlights
the future work and forms the conclusion.

In biological immune system comprised of set of immune cells

known as lymphocytes made up of B and T cells. Each
lymphocyte has a receptor on its surface. This receptor is
bound with the antigen by means of chemical interactions
which may activate the respective immune cell. Immune cell
which is activated is then prompted to double its size and
divide itself into two daughter cells. This process of cell
division is known as proliferation. Newly produced daughter
cells will further proliferate and produce more cells of their
kind. At the end of this clonal process approximately 20,000
identical B-cells will be produced that can recognize the same
antigen [3].
III. ARTIFICIAL IMMUNE SYSTEMS
Artificial Immune system is one of the new emerging learning
techniques in artificial intelligence and cognition. Scientists
are vigorously looking for breakthrough in the field of
artificial immune system by developing and improving
different algorithms in this field [4]. Different versions of
spam detections were proposed by many researchers which
were inspired by immune system. A. Abi-Haider and L.M.
Rocha in [5] proposed adaptive spam detection system which
results from inspiration of immune system. The model given
by Carneiro et al [6] is known as cross-regulation model
which distinguish between the harmless and harmful antigens
is also based on natural immune system. In [8] a method for
securing the wireless sensor network based on artificial
immune system is discussed with respect to multi-agent
environments.

IV. PROPOSED ARCHITECTURE AND WORKING

Our aim in this paper is to design a cognitive agent which will
classify emails in different categories with the help artificial
immune system (AIS). The architecture of this agent is given
in the figure.1.
This agent consists of the following parts:
a. Goals
b. Behavior Networks
c. Global Work Space
d. Perception Module
e. Episodic Memory
f. Day Memory
g. Meta Cognition
h. Codelets
This concept of goals is similar to drives concept given by the
Stan Franklin in VMATTIE [7]. Several goals are functioning
in parallel such as:

I.

Interpret every incoming email.

II.
III.
IV.

Acknowledgment of receipt of email

Maintain updated category list.
Maintain the updated mailing list.

Behavior Network in coalition with goals and global work

space act as the action selection module which helps in
selecting the appropriate action against perception. Perception
module consists of INPUT/OUTPUT, Immune Cells, immune
memory cells and working memory. The working of
perception module will be discussed in next section. In
episodic memory this agent stores the episodes of incoming
emails which helps it in categorization of emails of similar
type. Day memory will store the shadow copy of the
perception for further use in case of the interrupt from Meta
cognition occurs on invalid classification of email. Content of
day memory will be cleared after fixed time of interval.
Codelets is connected to all the entities as it provides the
functional programs for each task performed by listed entities
in figure 1.

Figure.1. Proposed Architecture of Cognitive Agent for Email Classification.

a.

PERCEPTION LEARNING

Perception learning module of cognitive agent for email

classification (CAEC) comprised of INPUT/OUTPUT,
immune cells, immune memory cells and working memory as
shown in figure 2. The purpose of this module is to perceive
the incoming email with respect to previous knowledge and
experience of the agent.
Immune cells in this module are similar to the natural B-cells.
These immune cells have inherited some features and
behaviors from the natural B-cells and T-cells. From now
onward we called these both cells as B-cells. Immune cells are
divided into two groups; one is group of nave (free) B-cells
and second is memory B-cells.

When email is to be classified it is treated as antigen and fed

into the working memory. In working memory email is first
converted into the antigen with the same format of features
vector as is of B-cells (immune cells). Then in the working
memory the affinity level of both the antigen and B-cells are
compared and if the affinity level of antigen and any B-cell is
higher than the threshold level then that B-cell recognizes the
antigen. The perception is then forwarded to the episodic
memory and behavior networks. If there is no feedback
received from the Meta cognition regarding the perception of
the email then the B-cell which identifies the email will be
treated as useful and promoted to the long lived memory Bcells. This promoted B-cell will also be selected at the same

time of promotion for reproduction of its own kind by cloning.

Process flow of the perception is represented in figure 3.

look into the complete cognitive cycle of CAEC with behavior

selection.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Kashif Saleem is research scholar at National College of Business
Administration and Economics (NCBA&E), Lahore. He is also associated
with Virtual University of Pakistan (VU), M.A Jinnah Campus, Defence
Road, Off Raiwind Road, Lahore as Assistant Controller of Examinations. His
areas of interest are Artificial Intelligence, Robotics and Cognition, Machine
Consciousness. Email: kashif.saleem@vu.edu.pk
Wajahat Mehmood Qazi is Ph.D Computer Science, associated with
COMSATS Institute of Information Technology, 1.5 KM Defence Road ,Off
Raiwind Road, Lahore Pakistan as Assistant Professor. His areas of interest
are Quantum Computing and Cognition, Cybernetics, Artificial General
Intelligence, Machine Consciousness, Bioinformatics
Email: wmqazi@yahoo.com

Figure 2. Perception Learning Module

REFERENCES
[1] S. Franklin, "Autonomous agents as embodied AI,"
Cybernetics and Systems, vol. 28, Special Issue on
Epistemological Issues in Embodied AI, pp. 499-520, 1997.
[2] J.R. Al-Enezi, M.F. Abbod, S. Alsharhan, "Artificial
Immune Systems Models, Algorithms and Applications,"
IJRRAS, vol. 3, no. 2, 2010
[3] L. Sompayrac, How the immune system works, 4th ed.,
West Sussex: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, 2012.
[4] I. Idris and A. S. Muhammad. [Online]. Available:
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1402/1402.1242.pdf.
[Accessed 1 February 2015].
[5] A. Abi-Haider and L. Rocha, "Adaptive Spam Detection
Inspired by the Immune System," in Artificial Life XI:
Eleventh International Conference on the Simulation and
Synthesis of Living Systems, 2008.
[6] J. Carneiro, K. Leon, I. Caramalho, C. van den Dool, R.
Gardner, V. Oliveira, M. Bergman, N. Sepulveda, T. Paixao
and J. Faro. When three is not a crowd: a Crossregulation
Model of the dynamics and repertoire selection of regulatory
CD4 T cells. Immunological Reviews, 216(1):48 68, 2007.
[7] S. Franklin, "Vmattie.html," 30 June 1996. [Online].
Available: http://ccrg.cs.memphis.edu/~franklin/vmattie.html.
[Accessed 1 February 2015]
[8] M. Jaderian, H. Moradzadeh, K. Madadipouya, M.
Firoozinia and S. Shamshirband, "A Method in Security of
Wireless Sensor Network based on Optimized Artificial
immune system in Multi-Agent Environments," Research
Journal of Recent Sciences, vol. 2, no. 10, pp. 99-106, 2013.

Figure 3 Process flow of Perception

V. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK

We focused on perception learning in proposed cognitive
agent for email classification (CAEC) using artificial immune
system. Artificial immune systems are robust, adaptive and
learning systems which based on the human immune system.
The dynamic and distributed nature along with its robustness
encourages us to choose it for our cognitive agent. Perception
learning using artificial immune system can be more
optimized because it maintains the previous encounters and
learns from them. Also it is self-organizing system so requires
no extra optimization of system parameters. In future, we will