X-Message-Number: 2879.2
From ig2!att!glas.apc.org!binran Tue Jul 12 09:59:31 1994 remote from whscad1
Date: Tue, 12 Jul 94 17:58 +0400
From: (Vladimir Razzhivin)
To:
Subject: CRYONICS
ARTIFICIAL METEMPSYCHOSIS.
A SEARCH OF METHODOLOGY FOR PERSONALITY SIMULATION
by M.V. SOLOVIOV
ST.PETERSBURG, RUSSIA, 1990
E-MAIL:
Abstract
A new conceptual approach (called Artificial
Metempsychosis) for investigations carried out on the
border between psychology and artificial intelligence is
introduced. Kernel of this approach is transmitting
particular features of a concrete personality into
computer. Methodology for this approach is discussed.
1. Basic conceptions
Artificial Metempsychosis (AM) is a conception
similar to Artificial Intelligence (AI). The both AM and
AI explorate the human intelligence to incarnate its
essential features in machine. The main difference
between them is that AI deals with the common features of
the intelligence, but AM deals with the particular ones.
It's important to have a try to explore namely the
particular features as (1) there are no appreciable
results from AI studies toward understanding and
realization of the human intelligence; (2) AM realizes
approach which is complementary to the AI - a try to
resolve the problem from the opposite end - understanding
how a concrete person decides a concrete task could
sooner lead toward understanding what is the essence of
intelligence than attemting to recover common principles
of task solving by humans.
Author assumes that in exploration of the
particular in the human intelligence the main research
method has to be computer simulation with correction
feedback from a person to be tested. Because (1) it's
very probably that there is no other way besides
simulation for a behavior prediction of such the system
as personality because of its very high complexity; (2)
simulation gives us the best understanding of a problem
because at simulation we are forced to detail (analysis)
a problem (system) - so we can better understand every
its element (that's simpler than all the system to do) -
and then we must reconstruct (synthesis) the system - it
gives us better understanding of system organization; (3)
simulation allows us to use computer as a mirror for
personality reflection with means to correct this
reflection. Before simulation start it is nessary to
create a model and before this - to get data about
personality structure from a tested person. Resuming, AM
investigations should consist from three stages: (1)
getting data about personality structure; (2) creating a
computer model of personality; (3) correction of the
model by feedback from a simulated person.
Note, it is essential that the AM has to simulate
the integral personality opposite to AI models usually
deals with separate features of personality. But because
of insufficient development in computer technology and
psychological investigation AM takes not the intact
personality, but the personality with partial senso-motor
deprivation, called the reduced personality. The possible
levels of personality reduction are shown in the table
below.
---------------------------------------------------------
Level Accessible Expierience Possible Realization
---------------------------------------------------------
0 Introspective Personal...Super Computer
1 + Speech + Speech Processing Device
2 + Visual + Image Processing Device
3 + Manipulative + Manipulator
4 + Motive + Mobility
5 All human expierence Mobil Integral Robot
---------------------------------------------------------
Level 0 is called "minimal personality".
From the written above it is possible to point
out that AI approaches lay in the bounds of so called
"computer metaphor". For better understanding AI
approaches extracts about computer metaphor and its
connection with introspection are cited below.
"Computer metaphor - it is the analogy between
cognitive processes and information processing in
universal computation machine." (Velichkovsky, Kapitsa,
1987). "That which this metaphor has to reflect - the
central nervous system and its functions is biological
large system. That which this metephor uses as an image -
computer, computational processes, data base is
techogenic large system. Metaphorization as itself is
dinamical, creative and long-term activity on comparing,
fitting and estimating of our ramified and precise
knowledge about tecnological information processing to
biological processes. Any intermediate result of this
activity may be (and as a rule will be) refused. But
during this activity the new knowledge is slowly
crystallizing." "Ideology of this short essay is linking
introspection and computer metaphor. Introspection is our
sole direct evidence about only available cosciousness
for us - our own one; computer metaphor is sole source of
really complex and dynamic conceptual models of psychics
which are able for self-development and, in future, for
comparsion with neurophysiological data. Using this
analogy we don't try to answer the qwestion "what is the
consciousness?" , but we only try to recover its features
which are to be essential." (Manin, 1987).
2. Getting data about personality
It is possible to get data about personality in 3
main ways: (1) introspection; (2) self-description; (3)
personal and intelligence testing. As for the third way
it can be wholly standart (using such test as MMPI, IQ
etc.), for the first and second ways there may be some
problems discussed in short below.
2.1. Introspection
2.1.1. Indefinity principle
Mainly introspection should be used to recover
"physical" (e.g. size) and semantics (e.g. time sequence)
characterisrics of visual and verbal patterns developing
in a person brain as a result of its mental processes in
order to understand mechanisms underlying them. Usually
it is used the psychotechnics to investigate personality
by introspection. But it is not the best way because it
requires to teach self-tested persons and hense it
changes their thinking. In common case (1) any attempt to
concentrate yourself on your internal world distorts
considerably development of its processes and (2)
concentrating on some selected internal world process you
miss the others - it resembles the indefinity principle
in physics.
Preliminary author's experiments were carried
out in such way: concentrating (with closed eyes and in
silence) on his own internal world for few minutes
followed by reconstruction of remembered internal events
(consisted from visual pattern and word chains). For more
precise recovering of internal world processes many such
the introcpective seances should be carried out for a
long period of time. So new and new features will be
differentiated.
Also to recover the introspective expierence it
is possible to use qwestionnaires (Gostev, 1986) and
pharmacological drugs (Spivak, 1986). But of course
indefinity principle is also valid there.
2.1.2. Gestalt-logic dichotomy
This dichotomy begins from perception. In the
theory of image recognition (Gleser, 1985) a visual image
is analysed and recognized structurally (logically) and
statistically (holistically). Another dichotomy is
vision-hearing (hearing - as speech perception and
analysis). Furthermore the thinking is devided to
imagical and logical. And "explanation" of the thinking
to the consciousness (i.e. introspective expierence
appeared as a necessity to explain self to other
inividuals (Piaget, 1950)) also consisits from verbal and
visual components. So it can see the dichotomy at all
levels of human information processing: perception -
thinking (subconsciousness) - explanation (consciousness,
introspective expierience). Here author holds the
hypothesis that all processes of thinking are located in
the subconsiousness and the consciousness is only a
result of explanation mechanism working, and feedback
influence of the consciousness to the subconsciousness is
an illusion of introspective expierience.
In other hand parapsychological experiments
(thought reading) demonstrate that a thought could be
read irrelative of its representation (visual or verbal)
and language used. This says that the deep mechanisms of
knowledge reperesentation and processing in human
psychics are essentially homogenous hence as a structure
for knowledge reperesentation in computer model it is
worth to use homogenouse sructures, e.g. semantic
networks. In semantic networks gestalt-logic dichotomy
could be reflected in some kind of conjunctive
connections. On author's mind this dichotomy reflects
only the difference in genesis (speech/vision perception,
logical/associative thinking) of the identical concepts
(i.e. it is the homological concepts to be conjugated).
Another open question is discretability of the
consciosness flow. Perception is essentially discrete,
but could the internal world flow be divided into
separate "shots"? Related to this the next computer
metaphor could have interest: gestalt thinking is anolog
process, and logical one is discrete, "digital" process.
Using this metaphor Nalimov's hypothesis (Nalimov, 1974)
about continual consciosness flows (thinking of an
individual person is a part of such the united flows) and
about translation of them by logic (verbal, discrete)
thinking could be interpreted in the next way: the
structure of brain processes (e.g. dynamics of neural
electromagnetic fields) is isomorphic to the structure of
the matter in its deep levels (e.g. superstrings), and
because of it the brain processes at low energetical
expenditures can change this deep structure of the matter
(this phenomenon might be called psychic catalysis - an
analogy with biochemical catalysis). In such the way
various paraphenomena could be explained. In other words
an analog part of brain supercomputer is used for
interaction (perception, processing, generation) with
continual consciousness flows, and its discrete part
(they may be structurally identical - the same structure
(or process) can take part in the both analog and
discrete computations) is used for interpretation of
these processes, for supporting communication between
persons, for providing processes which have to be
independent from continual consciousness flows, for
processing information represented in in discrete form.
2.2. Self-description
Below several concepts are introduced:
(1) personality description: information, using which it
is possible to recreate personality; this information can
be divided to two components: structural or passive
(memory about expierience) and functional or active
(mechanisms, basing on perception and memory, to organize
personality behaviour);
(2) personality reconstruction: recreating of personality
using its description;
(3) knowledges about personality (in the sense of
knowledge representation): ordered passive component of
personality description; information about personality
could be got in amorphous representation (e.g.
autobiography) or in predefined scheme (based on a
hypothesis on memory organization) - as filling slots in
a frame or answering qwestionnaire;
(4) inference mechanism: active component of personality
description; inference mechanism is strongly depended
upon memory organization;
(5) personality verification: correspondence evaluating
between reconstructed personality and its prototype. (The
next brain experiments could be accounted as an evidence
of high dynamics of pesonality and fuzziness of its
borders: "Try to evaluate how you is similar to that man
you was 5, 10, 15, 20 years ago. Greater than 50%?.
What'll remain from your present self after 10, 20 years?
What could happen if you were duplicated and two
identical copies were placed in different environments? -
After some time would these copies be quite different
personalities or very similar ones? Could you be yourself
(keeping your self) if you lost (e.g. in accident) half
(75%, 90%) of your memory, your motor skills? Where is
the border separated self from not-self?" These
experiments illustrate the hypothesis: personality is
defined by some kernel (regions of memory, individual
features of inference mechanisms), and personality parts
outside this kernel can greatly vary - and for
personality reconstruction it is necessary to render this
kernel correctly (one of the AM goals is an attempt to
recover this kernel).
On author's mind, personality description could
be got by immediate way: reading it directly from brain
using methods of biocontrol, thermovision, tomography
(Ivanov-Muromskiy, 1983) or future achievements in the
nanotechnology, but for today it is rather fantastic.
Another way is getting this information by indirect way,
for example: methods based on neuropharmacology or
parapsychology, working out methods based on integral
aura registration at the moment of death, transmission of
sacred texts in the Indian culture by personality
transferring from a teacher to its student (Sementsov,
1988). There is proposed indirect, psychology based
methods using combination of the next approaches:
(1) amorphous - account information about yourself by
non-structural way; for example, diary, autobiographical
novel or film;
(2) structural - self-description by filling special
forms;
(3) test - testing by test batteries (questionnaires) to
recover personality structure and inference mechanisms;
(4) introspective - reconstruction of personality
structure based on description of introspective
expierience;
(5) simulation - updating information about personality
by simulation with feedback from tested person.
3. Computer model of personality
3.1. Personality conceptualization
It's possible to represent personality to be
consisted from two components: personality structure and
inference mechanisms working over it. Personality
structure could be described by a semantic net. There
would be the next inference mechanisms:
(1) simple mechanisms for working with large memory
(specimen search, association etc.) to realize memory
based reasoning (Waltz, 1987);
(2) production mechanisms to realize heuristics
reasoning;
(3) mechanisms to realize analogy based reasoning (Waltz,
1987, Lenat, 1984);
(4) mechanisms to realize simulation based reasoning;
(5) metamechanisms to control concurrent work of other
mechanisms.
And in addition to the long-term memory (semantic net)
there should be a short-term or working memory.
3.2. A model for neuronet computation
First of all, a model for neuronet computation
should reflect basic known facts about neocortex
organization:
(1) computer neocortex consists from 10,000-100,000
modules connected "each with each" (Nth module is
connected with Mth by a different number - it is defined
by commutative channel scheme for neocortex modules);
(2) each module is an elementary processing unit with
1000-10,000 inputs and outputs and consists from upto a
million nodes;
(3) each node gets 2 inputs from other nodes (from which,
it is defined by commutation sceme for module nodes),
posesses a small piece of memory, and performs a number
of simple operations: logical, ariphmetical, table
transformations, memory read/write.
Also a model should allow to embed the semantic
net into the neural net and to realize mechanism of
knowledge activation.
And of course, a model should allow to realize
concepts of brain functioning at high levels.
This model could be properly realized by digital
(or combined digital-analog) optical processors disigned
currently at many laboratories around the world.
4. Conceptual scheme for feedback simulation of
minimal personality
In first, it is necessary to create a model of
minimal personality (prototype model). Creation process
should include the next stage:
(1) generation of hypothesis about personality structure
and inference mechanisms;
(2) creation a computer model for neural net computation;
(3) computer realization hypothesis (1) by model (2) and
designing of proper user interface.
In second, computer program for recover of
personality structure and individual features of
inference mechanisms by varios tests should be worked out
- work of such the program will be resulted in filling
the prototype model by contents of the concrete
personality (generation of animated model).
And in third, the feedback simulation system for
on-line correction the animated model by a tested person
and experimenter-mediated correction of the prototype
model should be created.
References
Gleser V.D. Vision and thinking. Nauka, Lenigrad,
1985 (in Russian)
Gostev A.A. Individual features of mental images:
results, problems and perspectives. In: Cognitive
psychology. Nauka, Moscow, 1986, p.121-131 (in Russian)
Ivanov-Muromsky K.A. Neuroelectronic, brain,
organizm. Naukova Dumka, Kiev, 1983 (in Russian)
Lenat D.B., Brown J.S. Why AM and EURISCO appear
to work. Artificial Intelligence, 1984, vol.23, p.269-294
Manin Yu. I. To the problem of early stages of
speech and consciousness (phylogenesis). In: Intellectual
processes and simulation of them. Nauka, Moscow, 1987,
p.154-178 (in Russian)
Nalimov V.V. The probabilistic model of language.
Nauka, Moscow, 1974 (in Russian)
Piaget J. The psychology of intelligence.
Routledge-Paul, London, 1950
Sementsov V.S. The problem of traditional culture
translation in example of the Bhadavatgita. In:
East-West. Researches. Translations. Publications. Nauka,
Moscow, 1988, p.5-32 (in Russian)
Spivak D.L. The linguistics of altered states of
cosciousness. Nauka, Lenigrad, 1986 (in Russian)
Velichkovsky B.M., Kapitsa M.S. Psychological
problems of intelligence investigation. In: Intellectual
processes and simulation of them. Nauka, Moscow, 1987,
p.120-141 (in Russian)
Waltz D.L. Applications of the Connection
Machine. Computer, 1987, vol. 20, p.85-97
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