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.

Thoughts in C++

Am converting my copy of Eric Baum's What Is Thought? to an ebook — it'll be great to have it on my Kindle; it's good practice for me at ebook production (from scans to PDFs to a Word doc to a Kindle ebook), and it's a great way of forcing myself to closely read every sentence (and word).

And as i'm doing the conversion (and reading the book), i'm thinking of the material in terms of writing C++ functions & libraries for my own word-based GOFAI software.

What FUN ! ! !

(And the debate on the legal propriety of ebook conversion is to me entirely moot, as there is no ebook for What Is Thought? otherwise available.)

Eric Baum's WHAT IS THOUGHT?

OK, time to get this blog going!

There's a class this fall at Tufts University—Comp 150-01 "The Evolution of Cognitive Processes"—that i really wish i could take.  It's an interdisciplinary look at Eric Baum's book, What Is Thought?, which i recently borrowed though the local library's virtual catalog and then purchased a copy from Amazon (for only $15, delivered!).

Who knows if i'll have the time or money to attend, but at least i can read the book (and work on C++ implementations of what interests me).  It's pretty good stuff, what i've read so far.

Gives me more stuff to think about when i go running each morning (my meditation time).  Even before starting the book, i'd already begun to work up my ideas of IdeaSpace and ThoughtSpace using words as atoms in an implementation of creativity and dreaming.

Thank you for your patience at my dilatory start to this blog!

Ciao!

Coming Soon!!!

Coming Soon to this URL:  a blog about Good Old Fashioned AI (in the languages C and C++ particularly).

I was a physics major; that didn't work out so well, so i went into Planetary Science.

That also didn't work out so well, so i went into English.

That worked out fine, and i graduated.

Then i did some work in symbolic logic.  And i had the idea of doing AI using natural language, with an underlayment of symbolic logic.

Then i did some work in linguistics — syntax, mostly.

Then some work in computer science, in Java.

Then C++ . . . and now i'm trying to wrap it up into one messy package!!!  (I was tempted to say 'neat' but it's obviously going to be messy.  :-)

So here we go!