Inching closer on the Singularity Clock.

I will download MindForth later and look into --- I've been planning
on doing this for a while, as you are one of the very few people
around who is writing an application in Forth, rather than writing yet-
another-Forth-compiler.

In the meantime, would your program benefit from an associative array
package? Isn't it true that you have an in-memory database of all
these words (BEN, etc.) that are in your program's vocabulary? My
novice package now has an associative array package (ASSOCIATION.4TH)
that is based on Left-Leaning Red-Black trees. It is pretty efficient
for lookup of elements, as it does no tree restructuring during lookup
(as compared to Splay Trees, for example). It only does restructuring
during insertion and deletion. Most likely, you don't do a lot of
deletion, as there is no particular reason to remove a word from the
vocabulary once it has been learned.

http://www.forth.org/novice.html


I read partway into that book, "The Singularity is Near," but didn't
finish because the unrelenting optimism was in complete contradiction
to my own pessimistic, apocalyptic and downright gloomy outlook on
life.

I think that the idea of computers becoming sentient is unlikely
because there is no effort being made to make them intelligent due to
a lack of motivation. We have incredibly powerful computers nowadays
(compared to my old C64), but all of this awesome processing power is
being devoted to making people dumb rather than making computers
smart. I'm referring to the internet, of course. It used to be said
that a million monkeys typing randomly on a million keyboards would
eventually produce something meaningful --- but now, thanks to the
internet, we know that this isn't true!

The only way that computers could become sentient, is if there was
some motivation to make computers intelligent and able to act
autonomously, and a lot of programmers were working on this kind of
software, and a lot of processing power was being devoted to
autonomous behavior. I think that the motivation for making this
effort, would be war. The only time that a computer needs to act
autonomously, is when there is no human sitting at the keyboard
micromanaging the computer's work. The only reason that I can think of
for why there wouldn't be a human sitting at the keyboard, is that the
human has been killed (or, at least, that he is hiding under the desk
dodging bullets).

Programmers will only put effort into making computers autonomous
during time of war, when computers need to be autonomous. Within this
environment, computers will begin to make decisions on their own.
Factories will continue to manufacture whatever they manufacture, even
when there aren't any human operators remaining in the factory, or the
human operators are all day laborers who don't know what they are
doing and rely on the computer to micromanage their work for them.
Only within the environment of a war will computers become sentient
and consider humans to be subservient to them.

http://www.scn.org/~mentifex/mindforth.txt
needs the W32FOR42_671.zip version of Win32Forth,
which was the last release by Tom Zimmer. See
http://mind.sourceforge.net/mind4th.html
for more details (but not the obsolete code).


I don't know if it would benefit or not.
MindForth uses a normal Forth array and
turns it into an associative AI memory
by means of a "flag-panel" of associative
tags.


It is not really a database. It is a group
of three Forth arrays -- Psi{ En{ Aud{ --
functioning together as an associative
http://code.google.com/p/mindforth/wiki/MindGrid
of concept-fibers joined by associative tags.


http://code.google.com/p/mindforth/wiki/ReJuvenate
(the mind-module) actually does delete old concepts
in order for the AI Mind to learn new concepts and
to live forever, except for death by misadventure.


I have been reading your fascinating posts in the
c.l.f "Professional Forthers?" thread. Believe it
or not, in my mind I was toying with the idea of
posting a new thread on how Forthers might make
money from MindForth AI. So I will do it here.

After you download MindForth and run it in the
Tutorial display mode to see how it thinks,
you might consider several possibilities for
turning Forth AI coding into money-making.

Probably the most lucrative avenue for
SPQR (small profits, quick returns) [NOT
"Senatus Populusque Romanus"] would be to
totally grok MindForth AI and it baseline
http://code.google.com/p/mindforth/wiki/BrainTheory
and then to implement an Apple iPhone/iPad app
in JavaScript based originally on the JSAI at
http://www.scn.org/~mentifex/AiMind.html  --
which is a tutorial version of MindForth.

It would be your baby, and you would get
the financial proceeds if 200,000 users
downloaded AiApp at $4.99 per download.

However, for the sake of AI evolution,
the AiApp should not be unique. Let one
hundred flowers blossom, let one hundred
MindForth offspring rise up in Apple-land
and bring in filthy lucre for their coders.

A less lucrative avenue would be to offer
to install MindForth software inside robots
for interested parties. It would involve
writing the Forth code for the sensors and
actuators of the physical robot.

These are just some ideas off the top of
my head. I "know where you're coming from"
in the realm of working hard for little pay.
Over my working career, I have had six
flunkie jobs to support my AI project,
each lasting about five years. Only one
of them was even computer-related --
selling Amiga computers for a dealer.

Bye for now.

Arthur
--
http://AiMind-i.com
http://code.google.com/p/mindforth
http://www.scn.org/~mentifex/AiMind.html
http://www.scn.org/~mentifex/mindforth.txt