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Functional Brain Anatomy for AIs
The brain is the ultimate complex thing in our admittedly self centered universe yet as complex things go a methodical systems approach can be very helpful in understanding and explaining away the complexity, in this series of short posts I’ve additionally tried to keep an eye out for the AI/Artificial Analogs we currently have and the missing bits needed to make new and novel AIs, namely AGIs (Artificial General Intelligences ) and CAIs (Conscious Artificial Intelligences), in this the last post I want to briefly go over some functional missing parts before wrapping things up…
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Emotions can roughly be defined as “Neurological processes that have evolved to guide behavior in such a manner as to increase survival and reproduction” (Gazzaniga), but as cognitive neuroscientists will tell you there is little consensus in the definition and a ton of theories on how they work,more narrowly emotions are individually graded (or valenced) positive or negative responses to external and internal stimuli ( loss of a loved pet for instance) which usually carry a physiological reaction ( heart rate, respiration, skin conductance changes ) a behavioral response (crying, social isolation) and a state of mind we call a feeling (I feel distraught after buddy my cat got run over), we can then sketch an emotional system of sorts:
To reiterate the utility, the basic emotional states are believed to be adaptive as the response is helpful in some way :- anger (fight response)
- fear (flight response)
- disgust (avoid poisoning)
- happiness (do more of this)
- sadness (make up for loss)
- surprise (take note)Our emotional systems are both easily fooled (we cry at the movies) and assignable by ourselves…
