A Unifying Framework for Novelty

“What is novel?” is an important AI research question that informs the design of agents tolerant to novel inputs. Is a noticeable change in the world that does not impact an agent’s task performance a novelty? How about a change that impacts performance but is not directly perceptible? If the world has not changed, but the agent senses a random error that produces an input that leads to an unexpected state, is that novel.