***
At the moment you have truth and attention
values attached to nodes and links. I'm wondering whether you need to have
a third numerical value type relating to 'importance'. Attention has a
temporal implication - it's intended to focus significant mental resources on a
key issue in the here and now. And truth values indicate the reliability of the
data. Neither of these concepts capture the notion of importance.
***
Actually, the AttentionValue has multiple
components. One is called LongTermImportance and it controls which things
are retained memory versus being paged to disk or outright deleted. For
instance, if you're overseas for three years cut off from all contact with your
home country, your mom's name may not be worthy of attention during that period,
but you won't forget it... in Novamente this means it has a lot of
LTI
Clearly,
ethical truths should have a lot of LTI...
There is also an AV component called "importance,"
which is controlled by a number of factors including LTI, the recent utility of
thinking about something, and the amount of recent activity involving that
thing...
***
I guess the next question is, what would
an AGI do with data on importance. I'm just thinking off the top of my head, but
my guess is that if the nodes and links had high importance values but low truth
values that this should set up an 'itch' in the system driving the AGI to engage
in learning and contemplation that would lift the truth values. Maybe the
higher the dissonance between the importance values and the truth values, the
more this would stimulate high attention values for the related nodes and
links.
***
The dynamics are not as simple as you suggest, but this
is the basic character of what the nonlinear Importance Updating Function
does.
*****Let's take the hardest case first. Let's take the most arcane abstract concept that you can think of or the one that has the most intricate and complex implications/shades of meaning for living.Lets label the concept B31-58-DFT. We create a register in the AGI machinery to store important ethical concepts. We load in the label B31- 58-DFT and we give it a high importance value. We also load in a set of words in quite a few major languages into two other registers - one set of words are considered to have meaning very close to the concept that we have prelabelled as B31-58-DFT. We also load in words that are not the descriptive *meaning* of the B31-58-DFT concept but are often associated with it. We then set the truth value of B31-58-DFT to, say, zero. We also create a GoalNode associated to B31-58-DFT that indicates whether the AGI should link B31-58-DFT to its positive goal structure or to its negative goal structure ie. is B31-58-DFT more of an attractor or a repeller concept?(BTW, most likely there would need to be some system for ensuring that the urge to contemplate concept B31-58-DFT didn't get so strong that the AGI was incapable of doing anything else.)We could also load in some body-language patterns often observed in association with the concept if there are such things in this case eg. smiles on human faces, wagging tails on dogs, purring in cats, etc. (or some other pattern, eg. (1) bared teeth, growling hissing, frowns, red faces; (2) pricked ears, lifted eye brows, quite alterness; and so on).We make sure that the words we load in to the language registers include words that the AGI in the infantile stages of development might most likely associate with concept B31-58-DFT - so that the assocation between the prebuilt info about B31-58-DFT and what the AGI learns early in its life can be linked early and easily.With this structure in place the itch to understand and elaborate B31-58- DFT should be pretty strong and the AGI would probably get a real kick about thinking about B31-58-DFT.In the earliest of stages the AGI will scan its register of preloaded ethically important concepts and find that it has no learned information to understand or link the words and body language patterns to B31-58-DFT because it has not learned to recognise these words and body language patterns in the real world. ie. there is no bridge yet between what it truly has learned for itself and the preloaded linked words/body language patterns. So the itch will still be strong to learn more (from experience and taught learning) until the bridge can be created. Once one or bridges are created then the AGI should engage in accellerated self-directed learning to create more bridges to concept B31-58-DFT. From there on the AGI will probably work on several fronts - filling out the concept, working out what it means for action, improving the truth value of the concept and retuning the importance value.How would this system work if B31-58-DFT was the code for "compassion for all life".Do you think the system could work (give or take a bit of tweaking /reworking to make it practical in any particular AGI architecture)?
**********************Hmmmm..... I am not certain, but I don't have a good feeling about it. I think it's fine to stimulate things related to compassion and inhibit things opposed to it, but, I think this will be useful as a *guide* to an experience-based learning process, not as a primary means of stimulating the development of a sense of compassion.You're asking the AGI to solve the inverse problem: Find the concept that is consistent with these descriptions and associations, and then embody that concept in your own behavior. I think this is a very hard learning problem and the AGI might will come up with something subtly but dangerously twisted.... I don't trust this 1/1000 at much as experience-based learning.That's my intuitive reaction...* ***I think that provided the ethical system is well designed and the ethical concepts seeded into the AGI are high order and well structured then I think this preloading would actually make the learning progress faster and more easily, and learning would be more motivating for the AGI and more stable.****I agree with that, but it wouldn't be the core of the compassion-acquisition process, just an accelerator and nudger...-- Ben G
