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.

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.

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

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

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

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