Reddit reviews Vehicles: Experiments in Synthetic Psychology

You may be interested in the books Optima for Animals and Vehicles.

Your robots are sentient to a basic extent. The problem is that people use the word "sentient" to imply much, much more than what it actually means. Also people do not like considering the idea that they are indeed robots -- very, very complicated robots.


You should read about the braitenberg vehicle. Very interesting and, in my opinion, "solves" this philosophical question.


http://www.amazon.com/Vehicles-Experiments-Psychology-Valentino-Braitenberg/dp/0262521121

Vehicles: Experiments in Synthetic Psychology by V. Braitenberg

Try this one

Vehicles: Experiments Synthetic Psychology

http://www.amazon.com/Vehicles-Experiments-Psychology-Valentino-Braitenberg/dp/0262521121/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1228760909&sr=8-1

Of course.

Anything that can be described well, to the extent that it can be described well, is essentially math.

Math, at its core, is just statements whose statements are carefully defined in their own framework.

Now, whether those constructions can accurately model the world or its parts is a deep question in philosophy. But the question then isn’t whether math can do it, it’s whether it can be done at all. If you can’t do it as math you’re essentially saying it can’t be done. This would be in the area known as epistemology (the study of what can be known).

An example of this is mathematical models of consciousness. Which take, as axioms, some descriptions that philosophers give to “conciseness” and then use the power of mathematical formulation to see what the implications of that are. What ‘things’ in the universe would be described as conscious then, when is a person a dingle consciousness vs many, etc.

The center of that particular space is Tononi’s IIT (integrated information theory) - which has spawned many papers examining the implications, soundness of axioms, and mathematical implications. [an example paper, chosen somewhat at random here: Is Consciousness Computable? Quantifying Integrated Information Using Algorithmic Information Theory

[Note: I am a consciousness skeptic; I tend to think the concept is vacuous chauvinism at heart, but this approach to addressing it — essentially “if true then what” is valuable I think.]

There’s an excellent, incredibly short, and easy to read book on this general idea. One of the best examples of concise, readable, and deep writing imo. It’s Vehicles: Experiments in Synthetic Psychology by Valentino Braitenberg.
Again, tiny volume. It uses simple thought experiments to examine artificial machines “vehicles” that exhibit behavior we would naturally use emotional vocabulary to describe. It challenges the assumption that organic internals like “desire” and “anger” needs be endlessly complex. I highly recommend it. It does not drop many, if any equations, but the controlled nature of the experiments drops them firmly in a mathematical framework as desired.

I can't speak for all roboticists, but I'm a big fan of Mark's work. He has helped to show us that one can achieve sophisticated behavior with relatively simple machines. Valentino Braitenberg made a similar point in his wonderful book Vehicles.

>It is actually impossible in theory to determine exactly what the hidden mechanism is without opening the box, since there are always many different mechanisms with identical behavior. Quite apart from this, analysis is more difficult than invention in the sense in which, generally, induction takes more time to perform than deduction: in induction one has to search for the way, whereas in deduction one follows a straightforward path.

Valentino Braitenberg, Vehicles: Experiments in Synthetic Psychology

You may be thinking of 'Vehicles: Experiments in Synthetic Psychology':

https://www.amazon.com/Vehicles-Experiments-Psychology-Valentino-Braitenberg/dp/0262521121

 

It describes "Braitenberg vehicles":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braitenberg_vehicle

Braitenberg Vehicles

"Team Geek" by Fitzpatrick/Sussman

For me, theory has always been easy to pick up. But learning how to work well in a team has been a real challenge (especially dealing with unproductive people), and this book is a great resource for precisely that.

I'm also a fan of "Vehicles: Experiments in Synthetic Psychology"; This book is what first got me interested in and thinking about artificial intelligence at a young age.

Both books are short, cheap, and easy and fun to read even for the layperson or the young.