Researcher Builds Machines That Daydream

schliz writes "Murdoch University professor Graham Mann is developing algorithms to simulate 'free thinking' and emotion. He refutes the emotionless reason portrayed by Mr Spock, arguing that 'an intelligent system must have emotions built into it before it can function.' The algorithm can translate the 'feel' of Aesop's Fables based on Plutchick's Wheel of Emotions. In tests, it freely associated three stories: The Thirsty Pigeon; The Cat and the Cock; and The Wolf and the Crane, and when queried on the association, the machine responded: 'I felt sad for the bird.'"

Comments

Building?

[zkrige]

so they're writing a software program, not building a machine

Re:Building?

[darkfire5252]

The damned machine is a machine; it doesn't get sad when it's fed a sad story, it just reports sadness.

As a graduate student getting a doctorate researching the field of machine learning, let me present a little thought experiment to you...

I would assert that you never actually get sad. You are, in reality, a soul-less shell of a person that just claims to 'feel' sadness, happiness, or any other human qualities. You never actually have any feelings in reality, you just report that you have feelings in order to not raise suspicion. Prove me wrong; somehow demonstrate to me that there is some abstract notion of 'emotion' that you possess that is present even in the absence of you reporting to feel that way or acting in a manner that implies you feel that way. I.e. prove to me that you somehow feel 'sad' when there are no external signs (you 'report' sadness, you cry, etc.) of your emotional state.

Before you mention that your metabolic processes are affected by your emotion, your body behaves differently (in a manner uncontrollable by you), etc., consider that if you looked at the memory space of the program that is running you could read register values that indicated 'sadness' in a way that is analogous to taking measurements of your physical body that indicate sadness.