The AI Engine

IM going to be starting a Webcite soon that tells things as how I see them. I thing that you two will like it since it incoraptes some of both of your ideas. I will post it once I get done with it.

I don't think these pre-matter humans are like what I would call humans at all (and in any event, they're not US). Also I don't deny and can't refute that there might be an underlying or overt plan. But if there is, it's definitely not simple enough for us, limited creators, to grok. Since we are limited creators, we might face obstacles to creating an AI similar to our own Organic Intelligence that a hypothetical or real unlimited creator wouldn't/didn't.

THe second law of thermodynamics isn't violated, by the way, by any localized increase in complexity. As long as the total entropy in the universe increases, there can be any *localized* decrease in entropy you like. It happens all the time in the universe, though organic living systems are among the most dramatic examples.

Lastly, there are non-cancerous "random" (meaning apparently random) mutations all the time. Our schoolmate Mike Hammer is working on a project at U.Chicago right now studying an example of non-genetic DNA variation, trying to see if these variations are predictable (they seem to be based on the presence of certain proteins during critical phases of growth). Anyway...

I didn't think you believed in boundaries. How do you have this notion of everything being planned out without resorting to determinism? Our bots certainly lack anything approximating free will, and that's the biggest challenge for an AI, don't you think?

Holy smokes! I just caught up on the recent postings, these conversations are outta' control! This one'll have to be a little long I think...

It seems to me that us humans have a big problem saying "I don't know". People can go on and on about "god", "the beginning", "conscience" with great certainty and conviction in what their saying when in reality, we simply don't know. We've got impressions or hunches of things like "collective consciousness" or "inner guidance", but unless you were actually part of some master plan or in touch with some being that is, I don't believe we'll ever know the answers to those very complex questions that are brought up here. Our main problem being our incapacity to manipulate time. No matter what your IQ is, you can only explore the "present". Yet, we're constantly travelling through time so the present is constantly changing.

I also sometimes get the feeling that everything could actually be explained and is a lot simpler than it seems, but that's ridiculous! This notion that we're somehow the most successful beings or that intelligence only exists in humans is something I just can't bring myself to believe.

When you think that their are about 1 million insects for every human on this planet and that they've been living here at least since the dinosaur era...

Or how about the unlimited number of wave lengths that exist? We've got ears and eyes that can detect certain ranges of frequencies, but other animals could detect and use any of the infinite number of ranges, thus enabling them to communicate with the rest of some borg or somethin'.

There maybe no evidence of randomness, but when you combine that to infinite, it seems like there's some kind of infinite loop in the calculation required to foresee and predict something that we see now as random.

Anyways, if we ever do come up with all these answers... and step back and look at the sketch that describes the existence of everything, everywhere, "everytime" - we'll have this horrible feeling that the search will have ended. The party will be over. yuch!

Evolution is just a word invented by man to describe change that we'd like to consider good. Calling a difference between "now" and "then" "Evolution" just gives us the impression that the change in question is for the better. Grossly misused in human history to control the population.

On another note, how come no one has discussed the possibility of us humans "evolving" into the machines? We're already using the internet to connect to the borg and using hard disk space as an extension to our own memory banks. When are we going to get rid of these troublesome bodies? If I spend my whole life teaching a machine to be like me... and then I die off... but don't tell anyone and let the machine keep on taking care of business...

What if we all did this and then there were only machines left? Would they have taken over? Or would we have evolved?

resion I have not said anything about this is because this is an AI page. But agian I dont want to go in to a long speach about stuff. I will have my webcite done soon and then you can all go and see what i think for your serlfs.

Also Proof that humans are Evolving, Im taller than people before me in my family. My girlfriend has a lager chest than women before her. Growing and becomeing more complex is what its all about, and if you can sit there ans say that Humans are growing (in all forms) then your not looking at things I guess.

Crab & Rahz, I do beleive the greater plan is currently beyond our ken. Perhaps there are psychics or mystics who can observe it directly, and it would be an interesting AI that such people could come up with. But one thing we can be experts at is fooling ourselves- I wont deny that. And so I think that's our first goal in AI- to pass the Turing Test, to fool ourselves into believing it's real. We can fool ourselves into thinking an AI has free will until we know enough to know the difference between real and artificial free will.

On the second law, you're right Crab- it does make room for pockets of anti-entropy. My argument with it is that it states that in any closed system, the energy will run down and entropy will increase. But I dont think there's such a thing as a real closed system. And that's open to belief, as it cant be proven to not be the case. So you're right, I dont believe in boundaries, or determinism for that matter. But to get beyond such apparent paradoxes, you have to look to higher dimensions of reality where time comes closer to simultaneity.

I'd like to hear what Mike Hammer finds out. Keep me posted on what you hear.

Ender- I'm about to launch FreeSitesForAll.com. That might be a good idea for your site if you want low-cost hosting. Just a suggestion.

We're taller and bigger-busted than our predecessors for the simple fact that a lot more nutritous food is available to us now. It's not due to evolution since the cause isnt genetic.

Sir Rahz- You have some good ideas. I think that there is a very simple "engine" running the universe and all of reality. I think the things, people, viewpoints, times, and circumstances this engine can create are beyond count and measure. So discovering the engine I think would just open the door to exploration of areas we've barely dreamt of. And so I go on searching.

We assume that there is nothing beyond our senses, but clearly there is. What if we build a machine that can sense triple the range of frequencies than we can and crush them down into our range. Is it more intelligent than us? More aware? More conscious?

K Ender, I'll really try to stick to AI...

You know that "Random" feature in these BOTS that makes up for their spontaneous remarks and realness? Well eventually, it would be nice to key in some other factors that aren't so random.

The date, for instance, can affect us in more ways than are at first evident. If it's remembrance day, someone that remembers the war will react differently than someone who's never experienced it. If it's Christmas time, a youngster will be genuinely excited while it's parent will be rather depressed.

The weather, well the weather controls everything! Yet some of us aren't going outside that much any more... and others work the night shift in an underground parking lot and would prefer a quiet rainy night because everyone stays home.

I hate to compare our AI BOTs to a measly game, but surely you've all experienced the SIMs right? Or at least know what it is... Anywayz, they've set it up so you create you persona with certain degrees of playfulness, cleanliness, humor and a few other factors I can't remember now (can hardly remember anything since I found the SIMs nude patch). Actually, I haven't played in ages, but the idea was that your SIM would be in a pretty rough mood if it's the "Clean" type and no one's had time to do the dishes.

I didn't put this posting in the bug stomp forum because implementing this will not happen over night. This would take tremendous research and restructuring, I'm sure. But I think if we want to have true AI, it's decisions should be based on *knowledge*, *mood* and *something random* (until we prove that randomness doesn't really exist).

Then all of a sudden we've got "moody bots"... which is great! And even more real!

So, if we were to ask one of these moody entities why it was so silly, it would answer "I dunno, I was just built that way I guess"... Sort of how we explain our own moodiness and deal with it. If we asked it what it's f.... problem is today, it would also respond "I dunno, must be the weather or something". Or maybe it would have to be a strictly logical response and it would answer something like "Moods for AI beings are a subset of parameters and factors that are included within our programming to make us seem more real. My parameters are set to silly, yet today, nothing silly is happening. On the other hand, moods for humans are simply an unexplained royal pain in the ass... I can't say why you all went ahead and made BOTs moody!".

Timeline for us, Prof?

Seriously, couldn't it be something like this type of feature sparks "consciousness"? Or is it still just an imitation?

Mood we can do, and I plan on it. The little things that affect us in the outside world like weather and traffic, cleanliness and seasons can be simulated, but that's as far as it can go until we drop these Bots into some sort of Sim-World.

Attributing emotions to causes (and they will largely be social causes) wouldnt be too difficult to do. The very calculations that determined the emotion can be written out in terms of cause and effect.

That's it. We need a new forum. I suggest we call it "The moody AI" forum. (Just a suggestion though).

Well done Prof! B2B chat is awesome. Did you program in a loop recognizer or something? Cuz I noticed a loop in my transcript but it only repeated three times and then the chat ended.

Also great to be able to trace conversation backward...

Thanks, Crab. I was under the illusion that I had the time to work on it, but actually my email was getting eaten by my Mail program. But it freed up my weekend. I actually programmed that bit while hung over.

There's no loop-breaking besides the AI Engine's automatic randomizing and nonsense-recognition abilities. It must have been a natural goodbye.

The AI-to-AI is very revealing in that you dont get the generous interpretation people give to Bots when their response is a bit strange. You get to really see where your Bot needs work and where it excels.

I've been putting together synonym lists for the Seek words. For example, if you use "yes" as a Seek word, it'll find any of the followig now:

yes,yup,yep,you bet,uh huh,uh-huh,affirmative,sure,why not,okay,yah,yeah,always

I've done the same for "no" and "why" so far. Any requests for others that may be commonly used?

300 USERS BABY, WOOO!