From the rewrite-in-progress of the User Manual --
1.5 Can MindForth feel emotions?
When a robot is in love, it needs to feel a physiological response
to its internal state of mind. Regardless of what causes the love,
the robot will not experience what the ancient Greeks called
damenta phrenas himero (tamed in the heart by longing)
unless some bodily manifestation of the longings of love
interrupts the otherwise placid state of the robot mind and
draws the conscious attention of the robot to its emotion.
It could be as simple an affect as the emitting of a sound
like thump-thump or tick-tock from a robot loudspeaker
feeding back into a sensory microphone, so that the robot
both generates and perceives the physiological disruption
of its previous placidity.
Makers of robots could program their nuts-and-volts
counterpart to commence the loudspeaker thump-thump
behavior for a brief period of time immediately following
each recognition of the presence of the human by the bot.
This automatic reaction might simply mystify the robot,
who would wonder why it reacts so dramatically to the
perceived presence of its human friend. Given the beat
of the thump-thump sound, and given its perception by
the robot, the fact of which emotion is felt is not a
given, but hinges rather on the cognitive predisposition
of the robot mind to feel any one of a range of possible
emotions.
The amateur roboticist who wants to inculcate emotions in
a forthmindful robot has got to match the physiological
manifestation of each emotion with an adequate sensory
perception of the physiological event. Here in the first
True AI User Manual, let us initiate and henceforth maintain
the following roster of possible emotions in robots and
their physiological concomitants.
* love -- felt as a thump-thump of the virtual heart
* anger -- felt as the flashing of a red warning light
We may add to the list as clever robogeeks invent and
demonstrate robust pairings of affect and percept for
each emotion. On the other hand, robot-makers could endow
their robots with the output-input pairings and let the
robots themselves sort it out as to which emotion is
called into sharp focus by each physical manifestation.
The one group of people whom we do not want calling the
robot emotion shots are the film directors and movie-makers.
A massive, fiery explosion is not a proper evincing of anger
or excitement in a robot tasked with vacuuming your carpet.
The theory behind our plan for robot emotions is that, once
there is a cognitive spark that could engender an emotion,
such as a sudden and drastic cognitive predicament, the robot
needs the involuntary bodily response and sensation thereof
to sharpen and focus its attention upon the emotional feeling.
Without the physiological jolt and its perception that bends
the chain of thought, the intelligent robot has no cause to
feel the target emotion. There must be a discontinuity in
the thought-stream, or there can be no emotion. Even if the
robot is only thinking about an emotion, there needs to be
at least a memory of the actively felt physiological event.
Early, disembodied versions of Mind.Forth obviously can not
feel an emotion if they lack a body to smack the consciousness
with the emotional ictus and to perceive what it feels like,
but MindForth holds out the promise of robot emotions to
pioneers in robot evolution who will incorporate MindForth.
Try to have some interesting emotional displays that will
cater but not pander to the insatiable lust of movie-makers
for Gotterdammerung-gone-wild special effects and godzillas.
ATM
--
http://mentifex.virtualentity.com/emotion.html
http://mentifex.virtualentity.com/mind4th.html
http://mentifex.virtualentity.com/m4thuser.html
-
This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email
To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to:
http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=94603346-a08d2f
