Student study guides

There is a good blog post on study guides and student attitudes on the 25 Feb. 2016 angrybychoice.fieldofscience.com blog.  I resist giving study guides.  I want students to do more not less.  I want students to learn more not less. I'm sure this hurts my student evaluations.

A concept of triggered recurrence

As we experience the world, we observe,  record, and refine spatial-temporal patterns at various levels of abstraction ("concepts").  We then use these to describe/explain new observations/patterns.  I am interested in finding new concepts with which to describe reality. (see my blogs of 21 Jan. 2016 and 10 Jan. 2016 for example) Fermi-Pasta-Ulam-Tsingou recurrence is related to an interesting concept Asa H has developed.  The pattern of activity described as "a volunteer fire brigade" is triggered by and follows the occurrence of a fire.  Asa H has developed the concept of a spatial-temporal pattern that recurs but only when triggered by the proper circumstances (rather than at some regular time interval).
Some of my colleagues think that I have given up physics altogether.  But I am trying to find better ways to describe reality.  This is physics at its most basic level.  Maybe there is not mass, not particles, not waves, not quantum fields but rather.......................

word2vec

Google is making a big deal of being able to take vector Paris, subtract from it vector France, and then add on vector Italy and get as an answer vector Rome. (for example, AI Weekly, 11 Feb. 2016)
Chapter 5 of my book Twelve Papers (www.robert-w-jones.com, book) pg 56-57 does the same thing with vector kitten - vector cat + vector dog = vector puppy.  My example was (intentionally) a low dimensional toy example but worked in the same way.

B.E.A.M. Robotics

In my small robotics lab I design and build robots that define and ground concepts for my artificial intelligence Asa H. (See my blog of 1 Oct. 2015) I also have a half dozen small BEAM robots. Is there any way they can be useful to Asa? Asa could operate on top of a set of BEAM reflexes or BEAM elements might be used in place of other pre or post processors. A light seeker could be used with my solar power panels.  A beacon seeker could direct a robot to a recharging station/"food".  Cliff avoidance would be a useful reflex/fear. A righting reflex might be useful for some robots. A thermophobic might keep itself from overheating. I could use a BEAM element for wall following.......

Humanoid robotics

I want my artificial intelligence Asa H to understand enough of the concepts (words) that humans use so that we can communicate with one another and understand one another. This wont be a perfect correspondence but then it isn't between individual humans either.  So far I have tried to give Asa any of these needed concepts in the simplest (and cheapest) way that I can.  My blogs of 1 Oct. 2015 and 5 Nov. 2015 explain how I've done this with several mobile robots and other computer interfacing methods.

Some philosophers believe that the details of our body configuration are also important if an artificial intelligence is to adequately share and understand the concepts humans use to describe our experience. (i.e., the idea that we might never understand what it is to be a bat, for example, just because its body configuration and sensors are too different from our own.) I have not tried to build a humanoid body for Asa H.  As expensive as robotics is humanoid robotics is typically even more expensive. Even Blankenship's minimalistic Arlo (Arlo: The robot you've always wanted, CreateSpace, 2015) would cost at least $2000.00 without sensors and without the computer(s) that would hold Asa itself.

At other times I want Asa to form concepts that humans don't yet have (for example my blog of 10 Jan. 2016). If these two goals are mutually exclusive I may simply have to follow two different training paths for two different versions of Asa H. (The old question again of what the learning curriculum should be for an artificial intelligence.)

Creativity

Concepts may be decomposed into a set of features.  Features from various different concepts can then be mixed and matched to define new concepts.  If the new concepts prove useful in describing the world they are retained in the pool of  known patterns.
It's quite common to see a new concept formed from an old one by the simple addition of a single new feature:
               horse concept  +  horn feature = unicorn concept
               horse concept  +  wing feature = Pegasus concept
               man concept  +  wing feature = angel concept
I see Asa H doing this as well.

Causal reasonings in Asa H

Asa H is designed to learn and hierarchically decompose the spatiotemporal patterns that it experiences (R. Jones, Trans. Kansas Acad. Sci., 109, 3/4, pg 159, 2006).

On one level in the Asa H hierarchy (or, more realistically, over a small range of levels) a pattern may be formed involving the concept of force, the concept of mass, and connected /leading to the concept of acceleration. 

On a higher level in the Asa H hierarchy a pattern may be formed involving the concept of thought, the concept of knowledge, and connected/leading to a concept of creativity. 

Patterns will also form between/across levels in the hierarchy.  The concept of knowledge, at a higher level, will be linked with the concept of memory (on a lower level).  Various concepts on lower levels, like the concept of a sentence or an utterance or message, will activate the concept of thought on a higher level.