Artificial Intelligence Wikipedia-based Free Textbook
Addressing the First (Free) True AI Mind.Forth

Since AI evolution requires a teeming, rioting diversity, whether you code in
Ada - APL - C - C++ - COBOL - Dylan - Erlang - Forth - Haskell -
Java - JavaScript - Labview - Lisp - Mercury - Oberon - Perl - Prolog -
Python - Ruby - Scheme - Smalltalk - Tcl - Visual Basic - XML
or whatever, do not worry if your artificial Mind is different from the most popular,
ostensibly standard AI Mind. Would you like your own human child to be identical
to every other human child? Of course not, so carve out your place in AI history
by coding your best implementation of any AI algorithm listed or not listed below.
Put the open-source AI on the Web; link to it; and may the best Mind win.


Forward to the Online Edition

The on-line Free AI4U++ Textbook
est omnis divisa in partes tres:

  • original AI4U pages that were online 2002-2008;

  • webpages of updates of AI4U chapters;

  • Wikipedia articles as chapter-extensions.

  • The Free AI Textbook makes it possible for any school
    anywhere on planet Earth to teach artificial intelligence (AI)
    to ambitious students regardless of their level of economic wealth.

    Students of artificial intelligence may use AI4U++
    either to build artificial AI minds from scratch or to
    modify/embody a preexisting AI Mind in a robot.


    AITree of Artificial Intelligence Mind Modules



    1. Code the Main Alife Program Loop of AI4U Chapter 1(2002):1-9.

                ___________                    ___________           
               /           \                  /           \          
              /  Motorium   \                /  Security   \         
              \_____________/\    ______    /\_____________/
           __________         \  /      \  /          _________
          /          \         \/  main  \/          /         \
         (  Volition  )--------<   Alife  >---------( Sensorium )
          \__________/         /\  loop  /\          \_________/
               _____________  /  \______/  \  _____________
              /             \/              \/             \
              \    Think    /                \   Emotion   /
               \___________/                  \___________/
    

    Code the Alife loop shown above in your chosen programming language.
    Use either an actual loop with subroutine calls, or make a ringlet
    of perhaps object-oriented module stubs, each calling the next stub.
    Provide the ESCAPE key or other mechanisms for the user to stop the AI.
    Spread your code around the Web and invite AI coders to expand on it.
    Watch for a proliferation of unique AI Mind entities evolving rapidly
    on the Web and competing genetically for the survival of the fittest.


    2. Code the Sensorium module of AI4U Chapter 23(2002):99-103.

    Now you have two modules, a main aLife module and a subordinate,
    Sensorium module. But what should come next in evolution?
    Now we need a reaction module, so that the organism may react
    to its environment. Let's call the reaction-module "Think".


    3. Stub in the Think module of AI4U Chapter 6(2002):29-34.

    Now, of course, the simple organism is not truly thinking yet,
    but we have stubbed in the Think module and we need to show it.
    You should now be able to run your AI program, watch it wait (briefly)
    for keyboard input ending with a press of the Enter key, and see
    a message (in Tab-selected tutorial mode) that Think has been called.
    You have a partly functional AI program, but it has not yet quickened,
    that is, it has not yet begun to think as a mind. But it should run
    indefinitely (until you press the Escape key to terminate it), looping
    forever through the brief wait for human entry either during the action
    of the Sensorium module, or upon the event-driven recognition of a key-press.
    If you do not have this organic functionality, your organism is not viable,
    and you must go back and reengineer your stem cells, as it were, of AI.

    With the proper looping functionality, you now have a stimulus-response
    organism. There is no knowledge being accumulated, because the animal
    has no memory. Therefore our next step is to create an Audition module
    that will feed into auditory short term memory (audSTM).


    4. Initiate the Audition module of AI4U Chapter 24(2002):104-107.

    Drop the [ESCAPE] mechanism down by one tier, into the Audition
    module, but do not eliminate or bypass the quite essential
    Sensorium module, because another programmer may wish to specialize
    in implementing some elaborate sensory modality among your
    Sensorium stubs. Code the Audition module initially to deal
    with ASCII keyboard input. If you are an expert at speech
    recognition, extrapolate backwards from the storage requirements
    (space and format) of the acoustic input of real phonemes in
    your Audition system, so that the emerging robot Mind may be
    ready in advance for the switch from hearing by keyboard to
    hearing by microphone or artificial ear. Anticipate evolution.


    5. The Listen module of AI4U Chapter 25(2002):108-111.

    Stub in a new module and call it the Listen module.
    Have the Audition module call the Listen module as a
    separation of the state of readiness to hear, or listening,
    from the actual act of hearing, or audition. By having
    separate Listen and Audition modules that distinguish the two
    functions, you could have an AI Mind that listened throughout
    an entire building, or the Pacific Ocean, or a SETI galaxy.

    6. Auditory Short Term Memory (audSTM) in AI4U Chapter 26(2002):112-118.
    Create an array for the sequential capture and retrieval of each
    discrete unit of auditory input, be it an ASCII key-press or a
    phoneme of acoustic sound. Plan and coordinate your engram array
    to simulate any required feature of a neuronal memory synapse --
    spiking connectivity, rapid excitation and gradual signal-decay, etc.
    Do not mimic what everybody else in avant-garde AI is doing, but
    rather fling your own line of AI evolution out onto the Web and
    nearby parsecs with the most advanced I/O that you can devise.

    7. The Motorium module in AI4U Chapter 4(2002):20-23.
    As soon as you have sensory memory for audition,
    it is imperative to include motor memory for action.
    The polarity of robot-to-world is about to become a
    circularity of robot - motorium - world - sensorium - robot.
    If you have been making robots longer than you have been
    making minds, you now need to engrammatize whatever
    motor software routines you may have written for your
    particular automaton. You must decouple your legacy
    motor output software from whatever mindless stimuli
    were controlling the robot and you must now associate
    each motor output routine with memory engram nodes
    accreting over time onto a lifelong motor memory channel
    for your mentally awakening robot. If you have not been
    making robots, implement some simple motor output
    function like emitting sounds or moving in four directions
    across a real or virtual world.

    8. Stub in the Volition module of AI4U Chapter 5(2002):24-28.
    In your robot software, de-link any direct connection
    that you have hardcoded between a sensory stimulus
    and a motor initiative. Force motor execution commands
    to transit through your stubbed-in Volition module, so that
    future versions of your thought-bot will afford at least the
    option of incorporating a sophisticated algorithm for free
    will in robots. If you have no robot and you are building
    a critter of pure reason, nevertheless include a Volition
    stub for the sake of AI-Complete design patterns.

    9. The Security module of AI4U Chapter 2(2002):10-14.
    The Security module is not a natural component of the mind,
    but rather a machine equivalent of the immune system in
    a human body. When we have advanced AI robots running
    factories to fabricate even more advanced AI robots,
    let not the complaint arise that nobody bothered to
    build in any security precautions. Do it now.

    10. Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) module of AI4U Chapter 3(2002):15-19.
    The HCI module, called by Security, is likewise not a natural
    component of the mind, but rather a requirement of robot
    hardware and AI software. Security and HCI work together
    to prevent dangerous inputs and dangerous outputs. We don't
    want intruders taking over the AI, and we don't want AI
    taking over as our robotic overlords -- who might welcome
    the possibility of implanting RFID chips in all humans.

    11. The Rejuvenate module of AI4U Chapter 21(2002):87-92.
    Logic dictates that, if and probably if you use a programming language
    that permits changes on the fly to AI source code already running, then
    the demo AI in your museum or corporate waiting room may live forever.
    On a principle of muse it or luse it, your AI Mind forgets en masse all
    its oldest memories -- except for those brought forward by associative recall.
    Standards in artificial intelligence urge you to code AI on a 64-bit platform
    so that ab origine you have a practically unlimited memory space, just as
    human babies are outfitted with enough wetware RAM to last a human lifetime.
    Robot babies are said to quicken when the Rejuvenate module works properly.
    Let one hundred robots blossom and contend to have the oldest-living AI Mind.

    12. Ego Self-Preservation module of AI4U Chapter 20(2002):84-86.
    The Ego module is not the seat of the concept of self in the AI,
    but rather it is a supervenient mechanism that intervenes to
    jolt the self back into thought and consciousness after any
    flatline period of the accidental cessation of associative
    chains of thought. Suppose that you are a Cerebrifex providing
    robot brains to industry and you wish to put on demonstrations
    without the show-stopper glitches that plague Apple and
    Microsoft when the whole world is watching as the product
    goes brain-dead at the worst possible moment. At a similar
    moment in your AI demonstration, when the big screen in
    Las Vegas goes blank for a few seconds, the Ego module
    kicks in and says, "I (mumble) (whatever)." And it does not
    have to be the Ego module that saves the day. If your
    conglomerate client wants the AI to think first and foremost
    about widgets, then a Widget module could resuscitate the
    robot mind and not an Ego module. In any event, these
    death-defying reset modules are necessary only in the early
    days of primitive AI Minds, into which the robot-makers have
    not yet integrated such compelling sensory inputs that
    robotic brain function could not possibly stop. Disembodied AI
    needs the Ego-reset module or its equivalent to preserve
    the artificial life of the individual specimen. If your
    career forces you to play a godlike role, you may not care
    about the survival of any individual and your chief worry
    may be about the survival of an entire species. Then you
    might outfit half of your individuals -- the worker robots --
    with a Reproduction module that always thinks about building
    new robots, while the other half -- that feeds and clothes
    the young -- is blessed with a Shopping module. In human
    terms, it would be as if the males were controlled by a
    S*x module and the females were ruled by a Shopping module.

    13. The Troubleshoot module on AI4U page 206
    is specific to the JavaScript Mind.html program, and takes care of
    the internal JavaScript housekeeping required when the human user
    selelcts the diagnostic troubleshoot display-mode.


    ********* Pre-Think Sensorium Modules:

    14. The English Bootstrap (enBoot) module of AI4U Chapter 22(2002):93-98
    provides the world's first True AI with several dozen words that are
    the English names of just enough concepts to demonstrate not how a baby
    mind grows but rather how a mature mind thinks and reasons. It will be
    the task of a more evolved AI to start life as a blank slate that needs
    to learn human language in the same way as a human baby learns.
    Mind.Forth and Mind.html start out with several dozen concepts and
    immediately learn new concepts taught to the AI by a human user.

    15. The Auditory Recognition (audRecog) in AI4U Chapter 27(2002):119-123
    is a mind-module that uses neural-network pattern-recognition to recognize
    whole words in English. The algorithm is not simple string-matching,
    but rather quasi-phonemic match-up based upon the activation-levels
    of the engrams stored in the auditory memory channel. Future evolution
    of the audRecog mind-module must eventually deal with morphemes as
    subsets of whole words, and with true acoustic phonemes instead of
    ASCII keyboard input.
    \ The audRecog module aims for the following entelechy goals.
    \ [ ] Recognize animal vocalizations as well as human speech.
    \ [ ] Receive Morse and other codes as well as speech or text.
    \ [ ] Detect human foreign-language accents as per language.
    \ [ ] Recognize particular voices of particular individuals.
    \ [ ] Switch from keyboard input to recognizing acoustic speech.
    \ [ ] Recognize words despite slight variations from correct form.
    \ [ ] Detect prefixes, infixes and suffixes.
    \ [ ] Recognize multiple roots within compound nouns.
    \ [ ] Recognize both singular and plural forms of the same noun.
    \ [X] Recognize plural noun forms as a word leading to a concept.

    16. The audDamp module on AI4U page 166
    resets auditory engram activations to zero after the recognition of a word,
    so that the AI may recognize the next incoming word without interference.

    17. The Instantiate module of AI4U Chapter 32(2002):144-147
    creates a time-bound node on the software model of a conceptual brain
    fiber in the artificial Mind. Thus a new instance of any concept is
    instantiated when the Mind deals with the concept in either the thinking
    of output or the comprehension of input. Software tags are attached to
    take the place of synapses on human brain fibers. Only one fiber is
    modeled for each concept in software, based upon the presumption of
    software reliability vis-a-vis reliability by redundancy in a human brain.

    18. The oldConcept module of AI4U Chapter 29(2002):128-130
    deals with the recognition of an already known word in the input stream
    by activating all recent nodes of the concept underlying the English word.

    19. The newConcept module of AI4U Chapter 28(2002):124-127
    treats any unkown word of input, even a mistake or a variant spelling, as
    a new concept to be learned and understood by the artificial intelligence.
    As long as a mistaken or unusual spelling is used consistently, the AI will
    build up a pattern of knowledge about the concept represented by the word.
    Each new word is given some initial activation so as to stimulate thought.

    20. The Parser module of AI4U Chapter 30(2002):131-140
    tries to determine the part of speech (noun, verb, etc.) of any word
    encountered in the input stream entering the artificial mind. Many
    parsers are available on the 'Net and could potentially be integrated
    into AI Minds based on the algorithms stated in these mind-module steps.

    21. The English Vocabulary (enVocab) in AI4U Chapter 31(2002):141-143
    is a mind-module that performs the software housekeeping of attaching tags
    to English lexical vocabulary words, so that activations may flow from deep
    mindcore concepts up to English (or foreign language) lexical items, and so
    that the activation of lexical items may in turn cause the re-activation of
    auditory word-engrams stored in the auditory memory channel --
    a self-perceiving channel where the mind hears itself think.


    ********* The Modules of Thought:

    22. Enhance the Think module of AI4U Chapter 6(2002):29-34
    which initiates the thinking process by selecting a language to think in.
    Concepts deep in the mind are independent of language, but grammar and
    syntax and vocabulary are different for, say, English and German and Russian.
    Mentifex AI claims not only to have solved AI but also to have solved the
    problem of machine translation (MT).

    23. The Activate module of AI4U Chapter 33(2002):148-151
    reactivates older nodes of a newly active concept during input
    from the external world. During generation of mental output, the
    modules nounAct and verbAct, derived from the Activate module,
    reactivate nouns and verbs in particular so as to enable the
    carry-over or slosh-over of initial activation from a subject-noun,
    which arrives as a spike at specific nodes of a verb-concept
    and, incremented by the additive activation of a selected verb,
    selects in turn the proper object of the subject and verb.

    24. Spreading Activation (spreadAct) in AI4U Chapter 34(2002):152-155
    is the fundamental principle of the artificial mind. Starting from a most active
    concept, the modules Activate, nounAct and verbAct send a spike of
    activation by associative tag to all associated concepts in a process
    called "thought" or "thinking." It takes a Chomskyan linguistic
    superstructure to express deep conceptual thought in shallow
    human language.

    25. Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) module of AI4U Chapter 12(2002):54-57
    is the most basic syntax of verbal thinking in man or machine.
    It takes a village of concepts interacting by associative tag to know,
    remember and express the relationships mediated by a verb between
    agents and objects. Robot Mind.Forth and tutorial Mind.html
    show the operation of the SVO module in tutorial mode.

    26. nounPhrase module of AI4U Chapter 15(2002):66-68
    flushes out the momentarily most active noun or pronoun to be
    a component in the verbal expression of an emerging thought.

    27. The Reify module of AI4U Chapter 18(2002):77-79
    transfers activation from deep wordless concepts up to
    the vocabulary words of a particular human language,
    such as English or German or Russian. Under Reify,
    the abstract concept is "realized" or is expressed
    as a "real" thing -- a word of natural human language.
    The thinking occurs among the deep, abstract concepts,
    but the linguistic expression of thought requires real
    words in a real language.

    28. English Lexicon Damping (enDamp) module on AI4U page 166
    resets lexical activations to zero after the thinking of a word
    so that the Reify module may transfer the next set of conceptual
    activations from the deep conceptual mindcore up to the shallow
    lexicon in time for selection of the next word in a nascent thought.

    29. The psiDamp module of AI4U page 164 plays a key role in
    artificial consciousness by damping down the activation of each
    concept immediately after it has been thought as part of an idea,
    so that consciousness may ride a moving wave of active concepts
    to flit from thought to thought in the stream of consciousness.

    30. The psiDecay module of AI4U page 165 lets semi-activated,
    subconscious concepts sink towards oblivion slowly enough to remain
    briefly available to the searchlight of attention and for the moving wave
    of activation to bring the subconscious concepts back into consciousness.

    31. The Speech module of AI4U Chapter 16(2002):69-72
    activates a series of phonemic engrams to speak or display a word
    that has been selected as part of a sentence being generated by
    the linguistic superstructure of an artificial intelligence.

    32. The Reentry module of AI4U Chapter 17(2002):73-76
    treats the output of the artificial Mind as its own input, so that
    the AI Mind may think about its own thoughts and become
    aware of its own awareness.

    33. The verbPhrase module of AI4U Chapter 14(2002):62-65
    flushes out the momentarily most active verb in the mind so that
    not only may a verb be thought and spoken, but also so that the
    combined activation from a preceding noun or pronoun and from
    the verb itself may coactivate the proper direct object from among
    all the historically available direct objects of the verb.


    ****** Syntax Constructions Beyond SVO:

    34. Negational Subject-Verb-Object (negSVO) of AI4U Chapter 10(2002):46-50
    converts subject-verb-object (SVO) sentences into a negation of the same
    underlying idea. The end result, a kind of Chomskyan transformation, makes
    use of the auxiliary verb (auxVerb) module to insert a negatable form of
    the verb "do" into the verb phrase of a sentence. Even in the most primitive
    AI Minds, negation is an important step on the way towards automated reasoning
    by means of syllogisms and other forms of logic.

    35. The Auxiliary Verb (auxVerb) module of AI4U Chapter 11(2002):51-53
    initially provides the word "DO" as an auxiliary verb for the syntax of questions
    and negation. In more advanced evolutions of the auxVerb mind-module
    it will be necessary to accommodate person, tense and number for a
    wide variety of auxiliary verbs.

    36. The Ask module of AI4U Chapter 8(2002):39-41
    is a waystation for AI programmers to code a mechanism that chooses
    what kind of question the artificial mind will ask. Initially the Ask
    module calls just one kind of question, an interrogative "what" query,
    as an example for additional question-formats on the order of the
    typical "who? what? when? where? how? and why?" inquisition.

    37. The wtAuxSDo module of AI4U Chapter 9(2002):42-45
    asks a simple question in the [What Do S(ubjects) Do?] format. Originally
    the module was intended to demonstrate machine curiosity and learning.
    Early versions of Mind.Forth and Mind.html were programmed to respond
    with "WHAT DO [BLANK]S DO" upon detecting the input of a previously
    unknown noun, so that the human user would have a chance to teach
    the AI new information for the AI knowledge base. More sophisticated
    versions of the same mind-module may yet evolve as a means of avoiding
    the generation of false statements by switching from an incomplete
    statement to a question that seeks a response with the missing knowledge.

    38. The Conjoin module of AI4U Chapter 13(2002):58-61.
    Code the Conjoin module as a mechanism to select conjunctions.
    Once the AI has learned to think or utter one simple SVO statement,
    it requires the ability to select the right conjunction in order to
    string meandering thoughts together in a stream of output that lasts
    as long as the process of spreading activation gives rise to ideas.
    In answer to input questions of "why", the Conjoin module may select
    the conjunction "because" -- followed by a statement of associated
    and possibly explanatory ideas, in a demonstration of AI reasoning.



    New Modules Beyond the Basic, Primitive AI Mind

    39. The Article module was created on 23.AUG.2008.
    The AI Mind software, born in 1993, did not start thinking
    properly until it was a teenager -- fifteen years old in 2008,
    to be precise. Then in 2008 the expansion of the AI software
    began with the simple introduction of an Article module to
    select "a" or "the" as an article coming before a noun in a
    sentence of thought being generated.
    \ The Article module aims for the following entelechy goals.
    \ [ ] It shall insert "THE" before something just mentioned.
    \ [ ] It shall substitute "AN" for "A" when warranted.
    \ [ ] It shall decide properly between the use of "A" and "THE".

    40. The kbTraversal module was created on 3.SEP.2008.
    In conjunction with the Rejuvenate module, the knowledge-base (KB)
    traversal module rotates through the reactivation of concepts held
    ready for thought in the English bootstrap (enBoot) startup-sequence.
    By rotating through a list of concepts pre-ordained by the AI mindmaker
    and by activating one concept per cycle of rejuvenation, the AI Mind
    displays a variety of thought on various concepts or asks the human
    user for information about the concept currently in the rotation.
    The Rejuvenate module calls the kbTraversal module only when there
    has been no input from a human user during one Rejuvenate cycle.
    If a conversation is going on between a human being and the AI Mind,
    then both minds (human and robot) are activating plenty of concepts
    and the AI does not need to traverse its knowledge base in search
    of things to think about. If, however, the human user has just
    started the AI software and does not know how to interact with
    the AI, or if the AI Mind is on display in a science museum where
    a conversation has ended with the departure of a human interlocutor,
    the KB-traversal module keeps the AI Mind on its toes, visibly
    thinking thoughts and asking questions which any museum visitor
    may seek to answer in a hands-on, interactive display of possibly
    the oldest living artificial intelligence in the record books.



    Algorithmic Troubleshooting

    Troubleshooting of the AI Mind starts with the highest level
    of the AI algorithm and proceeds down to the lowest levels.
    Look for troubleshooting tips on each mind-module Web page.
    Since the original AI4U Mind-1.1 code has evolved into a functioning
    example, any port into a new language or a new robot ought
    first to achieve parity with the basic functionality of the
    teaching AI and only then, after ensuring a basic
    functionality, start to add new features or refinements --
    a delicate process in software which may give the AI coder
    a feeling akin to performing psychosurgery in wetware.


    Commenting the AI Source Code

    See the material on "Comments" at
    http://mind.sourceforge.net/progman.html#comments


    Structured Programming

    Sequential Order of Function Calls

    See the material on Structured Programming Sequence at
    http://mind.sourceforge.net/progman.html#anatomy


    Robot AI Mindmaking Resources


    Return to top; or to sitemap; or to
    C:\Windows\Desktop\Mind.html
    [For the above link to work, copy to your local hard disk
    http://mind.sourceforge.net/Mind.html
    and name it Mind.html in the C:\Windows\Desktop\ directory.]
    These evolving AI algorithms are subject to change without notice.



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