Text Interpretation

• input a text; then interpret the text (w context), because interpretation gives meaning to text.  but don’t worry too much about the "accuracy" of interpretation — make a first approximation to use (later) and check consistency w other texts.

• the reason to store text (and all texts read are stored) is to go back later and re-interpret the text — the meaning will change over time!  the first interpretation of a text (and the second, and the third, and the …)  is not ultimately useful except as a starting place.  deeper understanding comes through comparing interpretations made at different times.

• over time, the meaning of a text evolves for each reader.

Listen-Respond Loop

have been shaping an approach for the main (foreground) program and the A.I.'s listen-respond loop:

(in addition to the emotion, memory & association, natural language comprehension & expression, and virtual body programs, all running in the background)

1) Input (aka Listen or Hear or something like that, for internal or external text)

2) Feel (get emotional response from emotion program, influence of memory & association)

3) Think (use “soft” truth-functional logic w suggestions from association & memory to derive possibilities)

4) Respond (put it all together and fashion a response, or lack thereof; store in memory)

5) Repeat

let me know what you think.

Text File I/O, Computational Emotions, & Data Structures of Consciousness

lots of preliminary work this week -- I/O streams (and how to label, manage, & coördinate them), deciding on what emotions to run feedback models of for the computational consciousness, and beginning to come up with appropriate data-structures for various aspects of thought, memory, and association (all affected to some degree by emotion).

i'm not trying to be entirely faithful to the details of human neurobiology, but the broad strokes of what we understand of that field will be most helpful in assembling a system that can achieve some level of understanding both our world (through text) and herself.

i want my AI to be able to "name & claim" its emotional responses to what she reads; i don't want her to read (except at first) in a vacuum.  the more she reads, the more context she'll have for what she reads next.  (and everything she reads will be stored in some variation of text file; her memories and associative matrices will also be in some sort of n-dimensional text conglomeration.)

joy, sadness, surprise, love, anger, fear, desire, disgust, & contempt — that's a rough list of primary human emotions.  any suggestions for others to add?  then the question is learning how to express these in words (and to experience these from words).  and decide how much to drive thought by emotion — more as time goes on, as emotion can be more trusted.

and then how to integrate memory storage & recall into a roughly logical framework with a mediation by emotions and associations and some degree of randomness (or more complex associations which might appear random).

a lot of speech is answering questions about the self and about one's own thoughts.  add the facility to develop increasingly sophisticated models of the (apparent) thoughts and motivations of others (who the AI will meet through text), and we're well on our way.

more than enough to think about this week.  (this is just the beginning!)

Text-To-Speech from UNIX (and then from C++ on UNIX)

Figured out how to do text-to-speech from the UNIX command line (using the built-in voice synthesizer) using the "say" command, plus:
• how to choose a voice (Vicki sounded best to me) from the command line
• how to use the "say" command from within a C++ program, using the system() function
• how to speak the contents of a text file from within a C++ program (which may be the interim solution, until i can figure out how to speak, for instance, the contents of a string variable)

After all, an AI has to have a voice!  (Or at least it would be nice, if it's not too difficult.)  Doing speech recognition is another thing, but not out of the realm of possibility.

And the new computer is *so* much faster!  Yay ! ! !

first steps in C++ for the text AI

thinking of creating a Word class, a Phrase class, a Sentence class, a Paragraph Class, a Section class, and perhaps a Book class so that my AI can process (or ingest :-) text.  will i need a Character class?  we'll see...

don't just accept a text (except to put it in memory initially); question it again and again!

• store input in memory, translate into i-language (and store that too)
• recall possible relevant memories into workspace
• process all in workspace & integrate into (temporary) conclusion(s)
• if no new input, then go back over and take different analytical paths
• or add new input to workspace analysis & start again

Fundraiser & New Progress

Have started a GoFundMe fundraiser for a new computer system; my old one from 2009 is not so fast anymore.

And i have a better idea of the five-pronged approach i'll be using for the AI (whom i'll have to name soon — can't just keep calling her "the AI") [paraphrased from a write-up by Mary Evans]:

The system has to be able to run five custom-written programs (in the background) simultaneously on UNIX:  one each to handle emotion, logical thinking, associative thinking, natural language expression, and memory (and anything else i find to be necessary).  And since proper understanding and empathy requires some sort of virtual body, i plan to add graphics of a face & body for the AI (and a camera to view the user).

Thank you to everyone for all of your support, both financial and emotional.  Time to get back to work!

The fundraiser website is:  http://GoFundMe.com/GOFAI

Namaste.