RE: [agi] AGI's and emotions

[J. W. Johnston]

Title: Message

Folks interested in this thread should check out the draft of Marvin Minsky's upcoming book "The Emotion Machine". Been available at his web site for quite some time:

http://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/

 

The current draft doesn't seem to have an executive summary that lays out the main thesis, but in a 12/13/99 posting (http://www.generation5.org/content/1999/minsky.asp), Minsky says:

 

The central idea is that emotion is not different from thinking. Instead, each emotion is a type or arrangement of thinking. There is no such thing as unemotional thinking, because there always must be a selection of goals, and a selection of resources for achieving them.

 

From my notes after skimming some of the book about a year ago, it seemed that Minsky sees emotions as kinds of "presets" (his term - "Selectors") that determine what mind resources and goals are active at a given time to solve a particular "problem". [I seem to recall Antonio Damasio also had a similar conception... and he called the emotional "set points" PATTERNS!]

 

The following is from the draft of Chapter 1 Section 6:

 

Each of our major emotional states results from ‘switching’ the set of resources in use—by turning certain ones on and other ones off. Any such change will affect how we think, by changing our brain’s activities.

 

In other words, our emotional states are not separate and distinct from thoughts; instead, each one is a different way to think.

 

 

For example, when an emotion like Anger ‘takes over,’ you abandon some of your ways to make plans. You turn off some safety-defenses. You replace some of your slower-acting resources with ones that tend to more quickly react—and to do with more speed and strength. You trade empathy for hostility, change cautiousness into aggressiveness, and give less thought to the consequences. And then it may seem (to both you and your friends) that you’ve switched to a new personality.

 

Good stuff! (IMHO)

 

J. W. Johnston

-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Ben Goertzel
Sent: Wednesday, February 25, 2004 11:25 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: RE: [agi] AGI's and emotions

 

Agreed --- we tend to project even abstract experiences back down to our physical layer, and then react to them physically ... a kind of analogy that AGI's are unlikely to pursue so avidly unless specifically designed to do so

 

ben g

-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]On Behalf Of Philip Sutton
Sent: Wednesday, February 25, 2004 12:00 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: RE: [agi] AGI's and emotions

> Emotions ARE thoughts but they differ from most thoughts in the extent

> to which they involve the "primordial" brain AND the non-neural

> physiology of the body as well.

I guess we call emotions 'feelings' because we feel them - ie. we can feel the effect they trigger in our whole body, detected via our internal monitoring of physical body condition.

Given this, unless AGIs are also programmed for thoughts or goal satisfactions to trigger 'physical' and/or other forms of systemic reaction, I suppose their emotions will have a lot less 'feeling' depth to them than humans and other biological species experience.

Cheers, Philip

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