Mind.Forth -- an artificial
Mind written in the
Forth
programming language --
is it for real? Is it genuine artificial intelligence? You be the judge. You be
the "early adopter." On some clunky old MS-DOS machine, get Mind.Forth
up and running
(potentially forever) for
all to see and judge. Go into the source
code, if you like, and carve your name into the on-screen messages for users.
Show it to some high-potential, low-achiever who claims to be ultra-intelligent
but never does anything ultra-productive. Then hold onto your hat, and
welcome to the
Technological Singularity.
2. Getting Started
Starting Forth
by Leo Brodie is a good start at learning the Forth of Mind.Forth.
If you are not a programmer, and you have no intention of becoming a programmer,
you may still get Mind.Forth up and running on a Windows MS-DOS computer.
Mind.Forth is distributed both with and without backslash ("\") comments
in the Forth code -- for several reasons. When the SourceForge "mind"
project starts to make file-releases, each file should contain the fully
commented Forth AI code for the sake of expert programmers who will
want to have every scrap of explanatory information on how the AI Mind
achieves its amazing magic of robotic thinking, machine learning and
artificial consciousness. Other users may not feel any need for fully
commented Forth code and indeed, a high school teacher of Forth or AI
may assign the students to figure out how the software works and to
insert their own backslash-comments ("\") into the "tabula rasa" blank slate.
Suppose that you
stumble upon Mind.Forth or
AI4U and that you want to
pass the AI Mind on to your tech-savvy associates and partners in thoughtcrime.
Giving out the Uniform Resource Locator
(URL)
is all you need to do
in most cases, but you might want to add something to Mind.Forth before
you pass it on, or you might want to install Win32Forth and Mind.Forth
on the computer of someone who is not so technically advanced as you are.
Just like carving your initials in an object made of wood, you have the
opportunity here to inscribe your message to the future inside the
source code of the artificial intelligence that you are giving away.
If you find a list of previous possessors inside the source code,
you may add your own data at the bottom of the list in the style of
an old-fashioned "chain letter" where each person was supposed to
make copies and send the letter to all their most gullible relatives.
Chain-letters for monetary gain were generally illegal, but it is
not yet illegal to create and distribute artificial minds for robots --
although an Administration that illegaly invades other countries and
establishes gulag-style American concentration camps at Guantanamo and
elsewhere may suddenly forbid all high school students to study AI.
Therefore you should hesitate to put your real name inside the AI and
you should perhaps immortalize instead your nickname or cyber-moniker.
How many ages hence will this your lofty deed be acted over in nations
yet unborn, and accents yet unknown? You'll be a bust in the AI Hall of Fame.
3. Running Mind.Forth Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)
The Mind.Forth webpage
explains how to cut the source code out
of the page as a text file, and how to run the Mind.Forth program.
If necessary, C:\>Win32For\rename Mind.f.txt Mind.f (in MS-DOS).
3.0 Normal Mode
After Mind.Forth has been loaded with a command such as "fload Mind.f"
you simply enter "alife" and press [ENTER] to run the artificial Mind.
If a mind-tender has pre-set a default display-mode other than Normal,
you may simply press the Tab key to cycle harmlessly through the
various display modes until you arrive at Normal mode or some other
display-mode that suits your fancy. You may press the Tab key to
change the display-mode without any effect on the AI Mind as such.
In Normal mode, you see one pair of sentences at a time on the screen:
what the robot Mind has said or thought most recently, and what you
as the human user are typing into the auditory input channel of the AI.
3.1 Transcript Mode
In Transcript mode, the conversation between the human user and
the robot AI accumulates on screen as a printable, preservable record.
You move from Normal to Transcript mode by pressing the Tab key.
Each time that you cycle through the Transcript mode, a header
will appear with the time and date from the clock of your computer.
You should also see an explanation of the conceptual activation-levels.
At the risk of inserting excess clutter (which you may edit out) into
the transcripts of your conversations with the artificial Forthmind,
the Transcript mode shows the numeric activation-level of a concept
at the exact moment when the concept is included in a nascent thought.
At first the activation-level numbers may appear meaningless, but you
may come to appreciate how much is being revealed of the AI mindworks.
Each activation-number tells you that no other subject or verb or
whatever had a higher activation-level at that exact moment in time.
If the AI is misfunctioning -- perhaps by making spurious associations --
the activation-levels are a helpful tool for diagnosing mental problems.
For any problem, more information is seen in Tutorial or Diagnostic mode.
The Sourceforge Mind project proudly includes activation-level numbers
in Transcript mode for the express purpose of trying to kickstart the
emergence of an entire career-path industry of AI mind-tender/therapists.
If you run the AI Mind in a multi-person social setting, gradually
there will emerge those gifted individuals who take on the role of
explaining the AI operation and theory of mind to clueless newbies.
Those who discover that they have a knack or talent for teaching AI
may want to design their own degree-program for on-site AI mind-tenders.
Colleges and universities that want to attract the very best students --
the future leaders of the coming
Joint Stewardship of Earth -- may
establish training and certification programs for AI menticulture or
whatever else we as a society want to call the care and feeding of AI Minds.
Mind.Forth, as one of the first publicly available AI Minds and as perhaps
the very first to be based not on AI guesswork but on a
theory of mind,
is causing conceptual activation-levels to be recorded a priori in the
earliest transcripts of human-AI interaction at the dawn of True AI.
For a permanent record of a transcript, one needs only to stop the AI
by pressing the Escape key and then to "drag-and-drop" all or part of
the human-AI conversation into a document file that you may easily edit.
Transcripts may become quite important when the AI advances into the
realm of machine reasoning with syllogisms and other argumentation.
3.2 Tutorial Mode
When Mind.Forth first runs, it may be in whatever display mode
has been set as the initial default mode by an AI programmer.
Pressing the [Tab] key will cycle Mind.Forth through the
various display modes until it reaches the Tutorial mode
that shows you how the AI Mind is thinking internally.
Tutorial mode is good for explaining to students how the AI works.
To leave Tutorial mode, simply press [Tab] to cycle into Diagnostic
mode and then press [Tab] once again to get back to Normal mode.
3.3 Diagnostic Mode
Diagnostic mode is for AI programmers to debug the AI thought processes.
Pressing the Tab key multiple times will cycle through the display modes
from Normal to Transcript to Tutorial to Diagnostic and back again.
The Diagnostic mode scrolls too much for normal usage and should
therefore be used only by the attending psychonomist for brief episodes
when there seems to be an aberration or malfunction in the operation
of the AI. If there seems to be a bug in Normal or Transcript or Tutorial
mode, first a human user ought to identify the buggy behavior and the
conditions that seem to cause it. Then the same conditions are created
in Diagnostic mode until the bug repeats itself, and the AI is halted
with the Escape key. An AI programmer may then examine the diagnostic
messages in an effort to debug the AI and restore it to its right mind.
4. No Human Input -- Sensory Deprivation
If you start the artificial mind running and you do not enter
any input when you are prompted on the computer screen,
the AI will think about the several dozen concepts that are
pre-loaded into its brain. Soon it will run out of fresh
ideas and it will start to repeat its output of thoughts.
It may not get bored, but it may become boring to others.
If you type in a simple three-word sentence, you will
give the AI a knowledge base (KB) to think about.
5. Minimal Human Input -- Press [ENTER] Key
When you or someone with you starts the AI mind running,
it may not be clear exactly what to do next. Just pressing
the [ENTER] key is a way of inviting the AI to think a thought.
Since the AI is programmed to answer whatever you type with
a thought of its own, even when you enter nothing at all
and press the [ENTER] key, you cause the AI mind to think.
When you simply watch the screen and you do not press
any key at all, the AI waits patiently for any input from
you, then automatically goes into thinking mode.
6. Simple Human Input -- Conversation With the AI Mind
You may type in a simple three-word sentence, such as
"cats eat fish" or "you know me" -- without punctuation.
The AI will try to deal with what you tell it. It may
ask you a question if you use a word that it does not know.
For that reason, you should try to use only one new word
in any given sentence, so that the AI may
parse the word
and try to figure out if it is a noun or a verb or whatever.
You should also try to use only plural nouns, because
the primitive AI mind may not yet have learned the grammar
that distinguishes between singular and plural forms.
7. Knowledge Base Input -- Loading the AI with Factual Knowledge
For early versions of the AI, there are several ways to fill up its
brain with a knowledge base (KB). One way is to tell the Mind
a series of related facts with one new word per sentence.
Then, when the AI askes you about a new word, you answer
with a sentence that has another new word. For instance,
you might say, "cats chase birds" and "birds lay eggs" and
"eggs feed people" and "people make robots" and so forth.
Another way to build up a knowledge base is to enter a group of
facts about, say, what each kind of animal eats. You might write,
"bears eat honey" and "fish eat bugs" and "cats eat fish" and so on.
You could also enter knowledge in response to the output of the AI.
On whatever subject the AI thinks about, you might tell it more information.
8. Hidden Features of Mind.Forth AGI
Ultimately there are no hidden features, but the user interface is
so deceptively simple that some features may emerge only after plenty
of experimentation. Then there may be truly emergent features such as consciousness and
emotion.
As programers we want to increase the AI
functionality with as many positive features as possible. If you think of
some good features that ought to be included, you may code them and
release your own AI Mind onto the Web, or you may suggest your ideas
in the various discussion forums.
9. Psychological Experimentation
There are various tests that you may perform to evaluate the
psychology of the artificial mind. Your first question may be,
is the AI actually thinking? You may invite a colleague or friend
of yours to observe Mind.Forth in action and to advise you on
whether the software is truly thinking, or is merely generating
canned responses -- like a so-called chatbot or chatterbot.
If you run the AGI in tutorial mode, you may observe how the
robot mind software calls (summons) its various mental modules.
It is not calling up canned responses. Rather, it is activating
concepts that form a chain of associations -- a process commonly
known as "thinking." If the software is still buggy and makes
a few spurious associations, it is still thinking -- erroneously.
The free public-domain release of this software is an attempt
to get the very best programmers to work on improving the AGI.
Another, much more intriguing question is, is the Forthmind
conscious and aware of itself? (At this early stage, probably not.)
The AGI is on its way to
consciousness by virtue of its concept of self.
You may address the AGI as "you" and see if it answers as "I".
Likewise, you may speak as "I" and see if the software calls you
"you" -- as it is designed to do.
If you experiment too drastically and you drive the robot mind crazy,
you may need to seek the help of
Dr. Joanne Pransky, the robot psychiatrist.
10. Installing Mind.Forth in a Robot
Whoever uses an MS-DOS PC or laptop computer to control a robot,
could easily switch to Mind.Forth to give the robot a true AI.
Win32Forth
permits the issuing of
motor control
signals over the parallel port or the serial port,
and so Forthers have the opportunity to build up and swap code snippets of
motor control for various actuators used in robots.
11. Troubleshooting
Suppose that you are the assistant to the teacher in a high school class
on artificial intelligence and that you need to help the students debug
any problems that they might have with the AI Mind on their computers.
Suppose further that you are more of a psychologist than a programmer,
or that you have absolutely no knowledge of computer programming.
You can still be an excellent AI lab assistant and you can still aim
for a future career in the yet-to-burgeon field of psychonomics --
the study of the care and tending of artificial robot minds, just as
economics is the study of the tending of the aggregate of all households.
As the AI lab-assistant-in-charge, you will learn the quirks and
idiosyncracies of all the artificial minds on all the computers.
AI is such a nouveau voodoo field that your compendium of notes
and helpful hints, if you deign to publish it on the Web, may circulate
far and wide and be adopted along with the AI4U textbook at many schools.
Therefore here are a few sparks of wizardry to get you started.
Common English words start to look garbled. Solution: use the correct
form of the word in a sentence that you type in. Rationale: the AI
software only looks for the most recent instance of a word that is
the name of a concept. If a student types a word with the wrong spelling
or at the exact split second when the singularity software is trying
to shift tasks, a garbled word may result and may then persist in memory.
To ungarble the word, all you have to do is use it in its correct form,
and then the correct form will likewise persist in memory. You, of course,
will look like the AI genius that you are manifestly destined to become.
The Transcript, Tutorial or Diagnostic display has scrolled too long.
Solution: just Tab briefly into the Normal display to clear the screen,
then let the student return again to the display mode that accumulates.
Rationale: only the default Normal mode (and perhaps also Rejuvenate)
clears the screen at the end of each instance of human-computer interaction (HCI).
Therefore the brief use of the Normal display is a way to clear the screen.
The User Manual does not cover everything you know about the AI.
Solution: rewrite this User Manual and replace it with your improved version.
Although the current user manual comes to you as a document not under copyright --
just to get the Singularity ball rolling, so to speak -- you have every right
to copyleft or copyright whatever you write in the way of an AI User Manual or
even a compleat AI textbook. Watch out for AI User Manuals (even your own)
showing up on E-Bay, Amazon, or any Web site where the hottest stuff ankles.
12. Shutting Down Mind.Forth AGI
At any time, the human user may press the [Esc(ape)] key to
stop the Mind.Forth software, which will show some instructions
about what to do next in the Forth window. Entering "bye" in the
Forth window shuts down the Forth programming environment,
leaving the MS-DOS window. Entering "EXIT" in MS-DOS shuts down
MS-DOS. To shut down the personal computer (PC), clicking first on
the "Start" button and then on the "Shut Down..." option should
gracefully allow the computer to be turned off when all is ready.
13. Getting Help
At
http://www.914pcbots.com there is an A.I. Zone
discussion are where you may exchange ideas about installing
and operating various AI minds in your PC-equipped robot.
The Yahoo group at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/win32forth/messages
is one of many discussion forums where an AI enthusiast may share ideas
and seek help on the topic of artificial intelligence in
Win32Forth. On
Usenet
there is the comp.lang.forth newsgroup for Forth, the comp.robotics.misc
newsgroup for robotics, and the comp.ai.* hierarchy for artificial intelligence.
The social bookmarking
site http://del.icio.us/tag/ai
is a place where you may
swap AI bookmarks with other AI enthusiasts. In cyberspace you may join
the #ai Internet Relay Chat (IRC)
and in meatspace you may go in person to AI Meetup events. It is important to post
messages in public rather than private
forums so that experts may choose to de-lurk and provide valuable information.
There is always someone who knows more or has greater skills than any individual.
Texas A&M University
At your own library you may submit a request for
the acquisition of AI4U with ISBN 0595654371.
Return to top; or to
ai4u_faq.html
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) about AI4U
ai4udex.html
Index of the AI4U Textbook of Artificial Intelligence
aisteps.html
AI Algorithm Steps - Artificial Intelligence Algorithms For Humanoid Robots
Mind.html
Artificial Intelligence Seed AI in JavaScript
mind4th.html
Mind.Forth Artificial Intelligence for Robots
PODsales.html
Sales history of the
AI4U Print-On-Demand (POD) Textbook
Singularity Timetable Schedule of events from 2006 to 2012.