The overall aim for Mind Loop is to create a simulated world, for one or more AI entities to live in. The intention of the simulation is to provide ‘life experience’ for the AI that will, on some rudimentary level, pass for a human existence.
The list below serves as a rough introduction to the basic ingredients of the project. As progress is made in the various areas, we’ll post what’s been achieved and expand on the notes below.
Simulated Environment
Where possible, this will be a ‘concurrent simulation’ meaning that certain conditions (sunrise,sunset, rain, wind direction) will be calculated / looked up and played out in the simulation. Basic locations of roads / buildings etc. will be sourced and enhanced by hand as necessary. There are now a number of excellent on-line services that provide detailed mapping data; the Open Street Map project (for example) records the locations of trees and litter bins in some locations.
Humanoid Embodiment
The AI will be give a (somewhat abstract) body. Having a body is undeniably key to the ‘human experience’ (as is food - which is why it gets special treatment below). We’ll also look to ideas like Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs - meaning that hunger and sleep, among other things, will be simulated.
Voxel Food
While we might be able to tackle interaction with the ‘environment at large’ using fairly broad strokes, dealing with food will require a much finer level of granularity. To this end, voxel food will allow us to express the texture, volume and structures of food in a simple format.
Parallel Content
With the advent of e-books, all major media types are now available in digital form. Ironically, in a simulated environment, digital availability enables its converse - because the novel Moby Dick is available in digital form, it allows us to easily simulate a paperback edition. (Of course, we could also have a simulated e-reader as well!)
Real Life - IO
Real life interaction will be a key area for the project - not least because if we, ‘out here’, can’t interact with the AI, what’s the point! But, this interaction will also serve to enrich the simulation. Our AI might spend a coffee break talking in a chat-room, and that chat-room may well be a real one. Email is another obvious candidate.
Non-Player Characters
The world is full of people, and while we don’t want to require the compute power to populate a whole village with AI folk, the few AI’s that are around will expect a busy world around them. To accomplish this, we’ll use the concept of NPC’s, which in Mind Loop will mean fully scripted characters that can interact as necessary (Think of the actors in the movie, ‘The Truman Show’).
The Brain
The brain will have to cope with all of the above and, in-keeping with the ‘human experience’ goal, the main world/brain interface will draw parallels with our senses. N3 style triples will handle core information encoding, breaking out into more appropriate data representations where appropriate. As to ‘brain architecture,’ Marvin Minsky’s ‘Society of Mind’ will provide a solid foundation; beyond that, moment-to-moment reasoning will be evolved as the various areas of simulation are implemented. (And if that doesn't read like 'We're not sure yet' - it should!)
Hopefully, that gives a taste of what the project is setting out to accomplish. We hope you'll follow along to give us some momentum (and also feedback down the line).
Bye for now!
