Design Perceptive

“Small moves, Ellie, small moves” – Contact

I’m making a little bit of a course alteration for this website.  I’ve had it mind recently to write up a how-to on a few of the typical tasks first-year Computer Science will encounter.  This aligns with my strong desire to teach.  So, I will be adding a category of articles on how to overachieve with as little effort as possible.  These articles will include general help, tips and step-by-step instructions.  I will also try to include some links to good websites about study / college hacks.

I am very delighted that my wife, Cynthia, is enjoying and getting good use out of her new website.

The use of potential fields in path planning is well established in the field of artificial intelligence.  In general, a physical space is modelled by a field of vectors where goals are attractors and obstacles are repellers.  Determining the direction to move for a mobile robot is then a matter of following the vector.

As intelligent agents, humans are constantly being pulled about by contending forces.  Our own beliefs and intentions betray us when acting as motivators to our own behavior.  I may horribly detest flying to the point of aversion, but the desire to flee conflict or danger may override that aversion and cause me to get on an airplane.  We tend to manage these conflict in a number of ways, including prioritization of goals.  Where one goal might be a low priority now, might become high priority later by virtue of time or other factors.

I am proposing the use of potential fields as a model for complex motivational system.  Under this model, behavioral states are modeled as attractors and repellers much like goals and obstacles.  Rather than modelling a physical space defined by the x,y,z dimensions, I propose a  space that defines relevancy.  In short, potential fields provide a means for modeling relevancy.  It also provides a means of dealing with conflicting goals.

I’m in the second, and final, semester of Senior Design in the Computer Science program at the University of Texas at Arlington.  One of the requirements of this curriculum is to sit a panel discussion.  Each member of the panel must give a 10 – 15 minute presentation and then be prepared to discuss and answer questions.  My panel sits about 4 weeks from now.  Naturally, but unlike some of my fellow students, I’m preparing now.  I mean, this type of thing is part of what I want to do for a career.

Anyways, the topic I’ve been assigned is “What are the social implications of artificial general intelligence?”  Yeah, I know I could fill an entire semester with this topic, but I only have an hour in which I must present and represent.  So, I’m trying to come up with a decent presentation that introduces the concept of AGI, discusses some of the popular conceptions of what happens when we do create AGI and what the social implications might be.

Going through this exercise is synthesizing some of my own thoughts.  Though they might not be novel, I’m writing them down here as a way to remember the path; a breadcrumb if you will.  It may be that I find support in the literature for these ideas, find that someone has already thought of these, etc.  That would be fine – I just need to get them out.

First, it seems to me that motivation is a key element in AGI.  Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs might then play an interesting role as part of a motivational system for a generally intelligent agent.   I’ll be looking into this concept and discussing more of it here later.