Machine Psychology

Aladdin Ayesh; MSc, PhD

De Montfort University
http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~aayesh/
 Scenario – The Lair Paradox

• Time: sometime not very much in the far future.

• Place: robot psychiatry

Robot patient
I am becoming a compulsive lair, can you help me?

Psychiatrist – internal conversation

If he is a lair, can I believe that he is a lair?!
 What are we going to talk about?
• The development of computerised machines
has taken a new direction with the development
of faster, more affordable and more reliable
processors and memory.
• E.g. G3 Mobile Phones
• Machine psychology is about creating more
humane machines with cognition, emotions and
intelligently irrational – just like the human!
• We will talk about living machines with mind- the
Challenge.
 Agenda
• AI Beginnings
– Philosophical beginnings
– Turing Machine
• Where are we now?
– Rational and irrational intelligence
– Can a machine have a psychology and what
does it all mean?
• What is the next episode?
• Happy reading!
 AI Beginnings

• Philosophical beginnings
– Before Artificial Intelligence is announced as a
research field, several philosophers, psychologists,
sociologists and linguistics were trying to formulate
the human thinking process:
 As early as: Locke (1632-1704), Hume (1711-1776), Kant
(1724-1804), Hegel (1770-1831), Husserl (1858-1938),
Heidegger (1889-1976),
 Formalising logic: Russell (1872-1970), Wittgenstein (1889-
1951)
 Machines started: Gödel (1906-1978), Turing (1912-1952)
 AI Beginnings

• Turing Machine – first proposed by Alan Turing

in 1936, gave a beginning for mechanised
algorithms.
• Turing Test – first benchmark of machine
intelligence proposed by Alan Turing in 1950.
AI has been born!
 Where are we now?
• Rational and irrational intelligence
– Does intelligence have to be through rational
thinking?
– Child plays
– Dog fetches
– Does any of this demonstrate intelligence?
Thinking?
• http://www.animalsentience.com/
 Where are we now?
• In late 1970s and during 1980 researchers
started to revise intelligence.
• One branch of psychology is to study
human intelligence and psychology from
their behaviour => behaviourist approach.
• STRIPS from Stanford 1979
• Subsumption Architecture from MIT
1985/’87
 Where are we now?
• However, the achievement of demonstrative
intelligence left us with questions:
– What can we do with it?
– How far will it be useful in daily life for domestic use?
– Can the answer be a return to the rational school?
– Are humans rational? What about emotions?
Perceptions?
The complexity of human psychology = human
intelligence?
– BUT
 Where are we now?
• Can a machine have a psychology and
what does it all mean?
– This is a challenge for all researchers in the
multi-disciplinary fields of cognitive science.
– Understanding our own cognition is a first
step.
– Finding formula to specify this understanding
– Implementing it!
=> Artificial Brain!
 What is the next episode?

• Cognitive Science and Cognitive Systems are

well established research fields now and
growing.
• Cognitive Robots is a field emerged that looks at
a complete cognitive creatures.
• National and international funding bodies and
companies recognise the importance of this field
(imagine cognitive intelligent mobile phones!).
• Grand Challenge for the Architecture of Brain
and Mind.
 Happy Reading
• http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/turing-machine/
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finite_state_machine
• http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/cogarch3/Brooks/Brooks.html
• A field guide to philosophy of mind
– http://host.uniroma3.it/progetti/kant/field/
• http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/cognitive-science/
• A web site for animal intelligence
– http://www.animalsentience.com/
• Betty Crow Hook story (Oxford Research Group)
– http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2178920.stm
• Sheep Dog Simulator at Birmingham
– http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/poplog/figs/simagent/
http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~aayesh/