Areas of Artificial Intelligence

CAT4 is proposed as a general method for representing information, enabling a powerful programming method for large-scale information systems. It enables generalised machine learning, software automation and novel AI capabilities. This is Part 3 of a five-part introduction. The focus here is on explaining the semantic model for CAT4. Points in CAT4 graphs represent facts. We introduce all the formal (data) elements used in the classic semantic model: sense or intension (1st and 2nd joins), reference (3rd join), functions (4th join), (...) time and truth (logical fields), and symbolic content (name/value fields). Concepts are introduced through examples alternating with theoretical discussion. Some concepts are assumed from Part 1 and 2, but key ideas are re-introduced. The purpose is to explain the CAT4 interpretation, and why the data structure and CAT4 axioms have been chosen: to make the semantic model consistent and complete. We start with methods to translate information from database tables into graph DBs and into CAT4. We conclude with a method for translating natural language into CAT4. We conclude with a comparison of the system with an advanced semantic logic, the hyper-intensional logic TIL, which also aims to translate NL into a logical calculus. The CAT4 Natural Language Translator is discussed in further detail in Part 4, when we introduce functions more formally. Part 5 discusses software design considerations. (shrink)

Topics in Cognitive Science, Volume 13, Issue 1, Page 243-247, January 2021.

A review of Marcus du Sautoy's 2019 book, THE CREATIVITY CODE: Art and Innovation in the Age of AI, Cambridge, MA: Belknap (Harvard) Press, 2019. ISBN: 9780674988132.

This paper presents a practical case study showing how, despite the nowadays limited collaboration between AI and Cognitive Science (CogSci), cognitive research can still have an important role in the development of novel AI technologies. After a brief historical introduction about the reasons of the divorce between AI and CogSci research agendas (happened in the mid’80s of the last century), we try to provide evidence of a renewed collaboration by showing a recent case study on a commonsense reasoning system, built (...) by using insights from cognitive semantics. (shrink)

Aiming at the conflict between access and storage due to the continuous accumulation of knowledge storage in the field of artificial intelligence in welding, the author uses RDF (Resource Description Framework) to represent the technological knowledge of CO2 gas shielded welding, designs and implements a knowledge base based on Web semantic and stores it in HDFS, which is used to solve the difficulties of mass data storage. By studying the mechanism and characteristics of spatter in CO2 gas shielded welding, aiming (...) at the common measures and means of reducing spatter, the author realizes the inference function based on welding process rules by using Jena framework and optimizes the craft realization, finally integrates the core functions into the Spring framework and adopts the HTML5-based interface design to enable a new welding process expert system across the Internet and mobile platform. (shrink)

The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) has led to renewed ambitions of developing artificial general intelligence. Alongside this has been a resurgence in the development of virtual and augmented reality (V/AR) technologies, which are viewed as “disruptive” technologies and the computing platforms of the future. V/AR effectively bring the digital world of machines, robots, and artificial agents to our senses while entailing the transposition of human activity and presence into the digital world of artificial agents and machine forms of (...) intelligence. The intersection of humans and machines in this shared space brings humans and machines into ontological continuity as informational entities in a totalizing informational environment, which subsumes both cyber and physical space in an artificially constructed virtual world. The reconstruction of mind (through AI) and world (through V/AR) thus has significant epistemological, ontological, and anthropological implications, which constitute the underlying features in the artificialization of mind and world. (shrink)

This article interrogates the challenge artificial general intelligence (AGI) poses to religion and human societies, in general. More specifically, it seeks to respond to “Singularity”—when machines reach a level of intelligence that would put into question the privileged position humanity enjoys as imago Dei . Employing the Bemba notion of mystico‐relationality in dialogue with the concepts of the “created co‐creator” and Christ the Key, it argues for the possibility of AI participating in imago Dei . The findings show that imaging (...) is a fluid, participatory activity that aims at likeness, but also social harmony. It also argues that God is the only original creator, humans are created creators, and that every aspect of visible existence, including AI, is inherently divine imaging. However, strong imaging is only attainable based on the only One and True Image—Christ, whose union of the material and the divine means that all creation can image, excluding nothing, even AI. (shrink)

In the mid‐twentieth century, theorists began seriously forecasting possibilities for artificial intelligence (AI). As related research gathered momentum and resources, the topic made impressions on public discourse. One effect was increasingly pointed emphasis on AI in popular narratives. Although considerably earlier thematic examples may be located, we can observe swelling and generally pessimistic threads of speculation in science fiction of the 1950s and 1960s. This discussion identifies some pertinent science fiction texts from that period, alongside public discussion arising from contemporary (...) research. One consistent theme is human receptiveness to the numinous , and the capacity to ascribe personality and even divinity to sufficiently impressive manifestations, even artificial ones. Science fiction has long contemplated such reactions, prefiguring today's anticipations of AIs that might abruptly develop themselves beyond any possible human comprehension or control. This body of exploratory projections is a useful resource for the engineers and philosophers currently grappling with realistic prospects for Western humanity's shifting conception of itself. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to grasp the relevant distinctions between various ways in which models and simulations in Artificial Intelligence (AI) relate to cognitive phenomena. In order to get a systematic picture, a taxonomy is developed that is based on the coordinates of formal versus material analogies and theory-guided versus pre-theoretic models in science. These distinctions have parallels in the computational versus mimetic aspects and in analytic versus exploratory types of computer simulation. This taxonomy cuts across the traditional (...) dichotomies between symbolic / embodied AI, general intelligence / cognitive simulation and human / non-human-like AI. According to the taxonomy proposed here, one can distinguish between four distinct general approaches that figured prominently in early and classical AI, and that have partly developed into distinct research programmes: first, phenomenal simulations (e.g., Turing’s “imitation game”); second, simulations that explore general-level formal isomorphisms in pursuit of a general theory of intelligence (e.g., logic-based AI); third, simulations as exploratory material models that serve to develop theoretical accounts of cognitive processes (e.g., Marr’s stages of visual processing and classical connectionism); and fourth, simulations as strictly formal models of a theory of computation that postulates cognitive processes to be isomorphic with computational processes (strong symbolic AI). In continuation of pragmaticist views of the modes of modelling and simulating world affairs (Humphreys, Winsberg), this taxonomy of approaches to modelling in AI helps to elucidate how available computational concepts and simulational resources contribute to the modes of representation and theory development in AI research – and what made that research programme uniquely dependent on them. (shrink)

The idea of artificial intelligence implies the existence of a form of intelligence that is “natural,” or at least not artificial. The problem is that intelligence, whether “natural” or “artificial,” is not well defined: it is hard to say what, exactly, is or constitutes intelligence. This difficulty makes it impossible to measure human intelligence against artificial intelligence on a unique scale. It does not, however, prevent us from comparing them; rather, it changes the sense and meaning of such comparisons. Comparing (...) artificial intelligence with human intelligence could allow us to understand both forms better. This paper thus aims to compare and distinguish these two forms of intelligence, focusing on three issues: forms of embodiment, autonomy and judgment. Doing so, I argue, should enable us to have a better view of the promises and limitations of present-day artificial intelligence, along with its benefits and dangers and the place we should make for it in our culture and society. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the research field of machine ethics and how it relates to a technological singularity—a hypothesized, futuristic event where artificial machines will have greater-than-human-level intelligence. One problem related to the singularity centers on the issue of whether human values and norms would survive such an event. To somehow ensure this, a number of artificial intelligence researchers have opted to focus on the development of artificial moral agents, which refers to machines capable of moral reasoning, judgment, and decision-making. (...) To date, different frameworks on how to arrive at these agents have been put forward. However, there seems to be no hard consensus as to which framework would likely yield a positive result. With the body of work that they have contributed in the study of moral agency, philosophers may contribute to the growing literature on artificial moral agency. While doing so, they could also think about how the said concept could affect other important philosophical concepts. (shrink)

Researchers in artificial intelligence and robotics often include a timeline stretching into the future in which they predict the convergence between human and artificial intelligence. Ray Kurzweil, for example, predicts that in a mere 100 years humans and intelligent machines will become indistinguishable from one another, both ceasing to have permanent corporeal forms. This article argues that the one thing we can know for sure about the future is that when it arrives, it will be different from what we imagined. (...) The cultural work that predictions like Kurzweil’s perform is less to prognosticate the future than to shape our understanding of what it means to be human in the present. Working from the ‘sense-think-act’ paradigm foundational to work in artificial intelligence and robotics, this article argues that predictions in all three areas feed back to affect how the human is envisioned in the present. The reconfigurations these predictions bring about are to downplay consciousness, embodied cognition, and evolutionary inertia. The article concludes by critically evaluating contemporary resistances to the posthuman, especially in the writings of Rodney Brooks and Francis Fukuyama. (shrink)

In the article, I propose that the body phantom is a phenomenal and functional model of one’s own body. This model has two aspects. On the one hand, it functions as a tacit sensory representation of the body that is at the same time related to the motor aspects of body functioning. On the other hand, it also has a phenomenal aspect as it constitutes the content of conscious bodily experience. This sort of tacit, functional and sensory model is related (...) to the spatial parameters of the physical body. In the article, I postulate that this functional model or map is of crucial importance to the felt ownership parameters of the body, which are themselves considered as constituting the phenomenal aspect of the aforementioned model. (shrink)

RésuméIl y a, dans la notion de dialectique moderne, deux perspectives de l'évolution intellectuelle: l'intelligence peut n'ětre encore que la pointe extrěme de l'adaptation biologique ou elle peut ětre déjà l'expression de la raison. C'est ce caractère ouvert des dialectiques scientifiques que nous retrouvons dans les interprétations étudiées ici: le pancalisme de Baldwin, la pensée sans images de Binet, l'interprétation de Janet et celle de Piaget, qui contribuent à enrichir la notion de genèse de l'intelligence et à en faire saisir (...) l'évolution.ZusammenfassungDie geistige Entwicklung wird in der modernen Dialektik aus zwei Gesichtspunkten erfasst, und zwar mag die Intelligenz wohl nur noch das äusserste Ende der biologischen Anpassung oder schon der Ausdruck der Vernunft sein. Das Offene eben der wissenschaftlichen Dialektiken finden wir in den hier erörterten Deutungen wieder, im Baldwinschen Pancalismus, im Denken ohne Bilder von Binet, in den Deutungen von Janet und von Piaget, die dazu beitragen, den Begriff von der Entstehungsgeschichte der Intelligenz zu bereichern und deren Evolution verständlich zu machen.There are two prospects of intellectual evolution in the notion of dialectics: intelligence can either be the ultimate point of biological adaptation or it can already be the expression of reason. Within this open characteristics of scientific dialectics are to be found the interpretations studied here: Baldwin's pancalism, Binet's » thought without image «, Janet's and Piaget's interpretations which help to enrich the knowledge of the genesis of intelligence and its evolution. (shrink)

Purpose: Reflecting on the propensity of our culture to think in local linear causality such as “genetic determination” by examining systems and their operation. Findings: The existence of a system is operational, and a system exists as such only as long as the operational conditions that constitute it prevail. As the observer distinguishes a system, he or she specifies with his or her operation of distinction the conditions that constitute the system. Since the adaptation between living systems and medium is (...) invariant, all that happens in their history must happen as a flow of structural congruent changes conserving their organization and adaptation. Therefore, the ontogenic phenotype is not genetically determined but arises in the process of epigenesis i.e., along a path of interactions starting from the initial structure of both system and medium, along the conservation of its living. Implications: Natural selection should not be considered as a directing pressure causing the differential survival of living systems but as its result. (shrink)

This paper evaluates the use of synthetic modeling to investigate the relationship between organic and artificial forms of behavioral mal-adaptability. In particular, it addresses the character of organic phobias and the issue of testing the validity of artificial models of these phobias. The two main accounts of organic phobias, the biological or evolutionary and the associative learning explanation, are used as the starting points of this exercise. The learning approach is explored in terms of a probability based model which uses (...) a discrepancy mechanism to represent the artificial phobia, while the endogenous aspect of artificial phobias is discussed in terms of the potential offered by evolutionary learning. Several methods of assessing the construct validity of artificial phobias are outlined. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that recent technological transformations in the life-cycle of information have brought about a fourth revolution, in the long process of reassessing humanity’s fundamental nature and role in the universe, namely the idea that we might be informational organisms among many agents, inforgs not so dramatically different from clever, engineered artefacts, but sharing with them a global environment that is ultimately made of information, the infosphere. In view of this important evolution in our self-understanding, and given (...) the sort of IT-mediated interactions that humans will increasingly enjoy with their environment and a variety of other agents, whether natural or synthetic, we have the unique opportunity of developing a new ecological approach to the whole of reality. (shrink)

Classically, the question of recognizing another subject is posed unilaterally, in terms of the observed behaviour of the other entity. Here, we propose an alternative, based on the emergent patterns of activity resulting from the interaction of both partners. We employ a minimalist device which forces the subjects to externalize their perceptual activity as trajectories which can be observed and recorded; the results show that subjects do identify the situation of perceptual crossing with their partner. The interpretation of the results (...) is guided by comparable evolutionary robotics simulations. There are two components to subjects’ recognition capacities: distinguishing mobile and fixed entities; and behaving so as to interact with their partner rather than with a mobile lure. The “Other” is characterized by the feature that there is sufficient regularity in the interactions to encourage the formation of anticipations; but sufficient indetermination that the actual behaviour is consistently surprising. Keywords: Recognition of other; perceptual crossing; evolutionary robotics. (shrink)

The paper starts out with a discussion of the difference between mythology and feasible concepts in robotics. Based on a novel brain model and an appropriate formalism, a distinction is made between auto-reflection and hetero-reflection of the robot and self-reflection of its constructor. Whereas conscious robots are able to auto-reflect their mechanical behavior and hetero-reflect the behavior with regard to the environment, the capability of self-reflection must remain within the constructor of the robot. This limitation of the construction of conscious (...) robots is mainly brain-theoretically and philosophically founded. Finally, it is proposed that in addition to a second nature, human technology may succeed in creating a third nature embodied as a society of robots. (shrink)

The present paper studies self-awareness and introduces some self-awareness related incidents. It then describes the relationship between self-awareness and consciousness and explains the MoNAD, a neural network circuit developed by the authors that capably describes the phenomena of self-awareness and consciousness. A model of self-awareness is then presented. This self-awareness model is a parallel network system in which multiple independent MoNADs communicate with one another. In experiments with robots, three test robots were used: (1) a self-image robot reflected in a (...) mirror, (2) another robot, and (3) a cable-connected robot behaving as commanded by the self-robot. The reactions of the three test robots to the self-robot were compared to investigate the self-awareness of the self-robot. The experiments have shown that the conditions required for the self-robot to interpret the test robot to be part of itself are: (1) the test robot must return a reaction within a certain period of time that is inte.. (shrink)

There is a debate about the possibility of mind-uploading – a process that purportedly transfers human minds and therefore human identities into computers. This paper bypasses the debate about the metaphysics of mind-uploading to address the rationality of submitting yourself to it. I argue that an ineliminable risk that mind-uploading will fail makes it prudentially irrational for humans to undergo it.

There is a general dichotomy in popular culture on the future of robotics and artificial intelligence: the Humans-Against-the-Machines scenario versus the We-Become-Them scenario. The likely scenario is the latter, which is compatible with an optimistic posthuman world. However, the technological and cultural paths to robotic integration still have many problems and pitfalls. This essay focuses on Human Robot Interaction issues that apply to adoption of robots in many aspects of life as well as adoption of robotics into humans themselves. The (...) main message of the essay is that the evolution of intelligent species is dependent on interfaces. (shrink)

Sensory augmentation challenges current societal norms and views of what is conceived as a “normal” human being. Beginning with self reflections of a bodyhacker, the author proposes an extended view onto the human or respectively cyborg body. Based on cognitive theories, it is argumented that we are already mental cyborgs. Our brains plastically restructure themselves in order to meet new requirements of the technological extended human.

How shall we have robots handle conditional statements? In this paper I argue that we absolutely cannot let them use several of the presently accepted rules of inference involving conditional statements if we want to avoid odd, preposterous, or even disastrous results. I discuss several kinds of problems that could be encountered and suggest alterations to certain rules of inference to prevent such problems from arising.

The advent of the cinema radically altered our comprehension of time, space, and reality. With his experience as a pioneering avant-garde filmmaker, Jean Epstein uses the universes created by the cinematograph to deconstruct our understanding of how time and space, reality and unreality, continuity and discontinuity, determinism and randomness function both inside and outside the cinema. Time, he says, should be regarded as the first, not the fourth, dimension—and the cinematograph allows us, for the first time, to manipulate it in (...) directions and speeds of our choosing. The theoretical work of Jean Epstein greatly influenced later generations of cinema philosophers, notably Gilles Deleuze and Jacques Rancière, but the bulk of his work remains unpublished. _The Intelligence of a Machine_, his first major title published in English, is one of the earliest philosophies of cinema. (shrink)

It is essential for social robots to fit in the human society. In order to facilitate this process we propose to use the family dog’s social behaviour shown towards humans as an inspiration. In this study we explored dogs’ low level social monitoring in dog-human interactions and extracted individually consistent and context dependent behaviours in simple everyday social scenarios. We found that proximity seeking and tail wagging were most individually distinctive in dogs, while activity, orientation towards the owner, and exploration (...) were dependent on the context and/or the activity of the owner. The functional analogues of these dog behaviours can be implemented in social robots of different embodiments in order to make them acceptable and more believable for humans. Keywords: dog-owner interaction; social robotics; low-level social monitoring; greeting behaviour; individually distinctive behaviours. (shrink)

Ever since the appearance of homo-sapiens, machines have served humans as a "brain nature interface" (BNI) - a means of interacting with nature, including humans and other living beings. The ability to use and manufacture machines has long been taken as proof of human intelligence: 18th century machines and automates and 20th century robots have had a tremendous impact in this sense. An entirely new milestone was achieved with the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) and its promise of revolutionary change: (...) a machine with an artificial brain. Even though this last point has so far remained a dream, AI and its powerful applications have given machines certain learning capacities, provoking discussions in many scientific disciplines. The BMI (Brain Machine Interface), a machine interacting with a biological brain, is another turning point that raises new ethical, philosophical and medical questions and problems. How is the new device and its purpose represented in the brain? What is the limit of brain plasticity induced by a BMI? Which brain areas can and should be sub-served by a BMI? Should BMI tools be considered as therapeutic or enhancing devices, or both? Indeed, BMI-controlled prostheses are not like any other tool: when they affect bodily skills, they strongly interfere with human life and its salient points, such as the opposition/juxtaposition between the characteristics of living beings and technological devices. This chapter will present the state of the art of BMIs and their applications, and will then propose a multidisciplinary framework to discuss the related issues, questions and outcomes by gathering diverse philosophical and engineering points of views. Issues and paradigms to be discussed concern the training time needed to acquire the use of a BMI and its prosthesis, the modifications of the human body and its abilities, the impact of a new modular bodily scheme, the tension between autonomy due to new capacities and dependency on maintenance, the risks of non-egalitarian positions concerning accessibility and social competition, as well as the risks of considering humans as a technological product or as a device. (shrink)

Context: The advent of a general artificial intelligence mechanism that learns like humans do would represent the realization of an old and major dream of science. It could be achieved by an artifact able to develop its own cognitive structures following constructivist principles. However, there is a large distance between the descriptions of the intelligence made by constructivist theories and the mechanisms that currently exist. Problem: The constructivist conception of intelligence is very powerful for explaining how cognitive development takes place. (...) However, until now, no computational model has successfully demonstrated the underlying mechanisms necessary to realize it. In other words, the artificial intelligence (AI) community has not been able to give rise to a system that convincingly implements the principles of intelligence as postulated by constructivism, and that is also capable of dealing with complex environments. Results: This paper presents the constructivist anticipatory learning mechanism (CALM), an agent learning mechanism based on the constructivist approach of AI. It is designed to deal dynamically and interactively with environments that are at the same time partially deterministic and partially observable. CALM can model the regularities experienced in the interaction with the environment, on the sensorimotor level as well, as by constructing abstract or high-level representational concepts. The created model provides the knowledge necessary to generate the agent behavior. The paper also presents the coupled agent environment system (CAES) meta-architecture, which defines a conception of an autonomous agent, situated in the environment, embodied and intrinsically motivated. Implications: The paper can be seen as a step towards a computational implementation of constructivist principles, on the one hand suggesting a further perspective of this refreshing movement on the AI field (which is still too steeped in a behaviorist influence and dominated by probabilistic models and narrow applied approaches), and on the other hand bringing some abstract descriptions of the cognitive process into a more concrete dimension, in the form of algorithms. Constructivist content: The connection of this paper with constructivism is the proposal of a computational and formally described mechanism that implements important aspects of the subjective process of knowledge construction based on key ideas proposed by constructivist theories. (shrink)