Machines + Knowlegde = Power
What knowledge can a machine have, really?
Everything we do has to have some knowledge about how much time and resources it's going to consume for you. Just about everything that we do involves allocation of resources. So, part of a thinking machine has to be lots of different ways of representing the same knowledge, sharing knowledge between them. And we have to get rid of this idea that there is something called analytical thinking, which is the core of everything. [With] most thinking, most people see something and say, 'What does that remind me of, and what do I do in that situation?' So one of the things that we have to do is get lots of people working on different kinds of analogies and metaphors. It's the most powerful kind of thinking, remembering what something is like. Then, of course, what are the differences, similarities. If there are some big differences, do you ignore them, or do you have to make a separate [analysis]?
There are no machines that do anything like that. . . . People still think that computers have to work logically.
How else would computers work, if not logically? How would you create a metaphor base to work from?
You have to build a system that looks at two representations, two expressions or two data structures, and quickly says in what ways are they similar and what ways are they different. Then another knowledge base says which kinds of differences are important for which kinds of preference.
Which of these different processes will have valid application to industry? Where do you see cascades of emotion being used by or being collated by machinery?
They are each good for a different problem. So what you want to do is stimulate different ways of doing things. Nobody is doing that. . . . So these days, we have 50,000 people working on neural-based expert systems or neural nets or genetic algorithms or logic-based systems. But on the whole planet, I actually only know five or six of these people. I assume there are five or six others that I have found who are working on designing a common-sense knowledge base. So it could take a very long time.
What I'm hoping is that when my book comes out, people will say, 'Oh, maybe that's something that I can do.'
Yeah, but why would they do it? I'm sure we'll get to the emotion machine at some point. Maybe not our generation, but the next one. Why would you want to put emotions in a machine? Is there any use to having it?
Well, you want to make machines that are smart. The whole purpose of my book is to say that there aren't things called emotions. There are different ways of thinking. The way to make a smart machine is to have different ways to look at problems and the knowledge of procedures which make it enabled to switch from one to the other when something isn't working, because you jump into another mode. But you asked, 'Why do we want smart machines?' That's another story. I think basically because we need help. They are not smart enough.
I think we all want smart machines, but I have trouble with the idea that we'll have emotional machines. They drive me crazy enough.
I don't know what you mean. You're using emotional in some wrong sense.
You don't want a sport utility vehicle going down the highway at 65 miles per hour that gets cut off, has the ability to recognise all the other traffic, recognises that it was cut off and uses the same kind of rationale as a human being, gets angry and causes an accident.
No. I'm not saying that. You want a machine that has many ways of thinking. They don't have to be the same as people have. So you don't want to revert back to the old meaning of emotion, which is irrational behavior. What you want is to have lots of different ways that are good at solving the problem that you want to solve.
The rational thing for the 6-year-old to do is to kill the baby sister to have all the toys permanently and not get into these quarrels. So what you don't want is a rational machine that works things out logically. You want them to have many ways of looking at them and balance them.
OK. So then what would be the practical applications? Which emotions - or which processes that would create liking or frustration or whatever - would be useful?
Well, for different problems, you'll make different kinds of machines. For example, people are no good at running governments. Absolute power corrupts. So can you make a machine that even when it gets power, won't abuse it?
