SynapticNulship

Nature-Inspired Development as an AI Abstraction

Samuel Kenyon — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 01:55:13 +0000

I’m working on some ideas and a paper to present my version of biologically-inspired development. But not just as a single project or as a technique, but as an abstraction level. It’s hard to explain, so let me first digress with this: The agent approach to AI became a mainstream part of AI in the [...]

Language Does Not Shape Thought

Samuel Kenyon — Sat, 18 May 2013 06:24:56 +0000

Cognition causes language, not the other way around. Correlations between changes in thought with changes in language abound. But the arguments are very weak for causality from language to cognition in this context. What do People Mean by Language Shapes Thought? Lera Boroditsky likes to spread the meme language shapes thought. Others have used it [...]

Symbol Grounding and Symbol Tethering

Samuel Kenyon — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 04:17:37 +0000

Philosopher Aaron Sloman claims that symbol grounding is impossible. I say it is possible, indeed necessary, for strong AI. Yet my own approach may be compatible with Sloman’s. Sloman equates “symbol grounding” with concept empiricism, thus rendering it impossible. However, I don’t see the need to equate all symbol grounding to concept empiricism. And what [...]

Sherlock Holmes, Master of Code

Samuel Kenyon — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 03:20:19 +0000

What if I told you that fictional mysteries contain practical real-world methodologies? I have pointed out the similarities between detectives solving mysteries to software debugging before. My day job of writing code often involves fixing bugs or solving bizarre cases of bad behavior in complex systems. In a new book called Mastermind: How to Think [...]

Biomimetic Emotional Learning Agents

Samuel Kenyon — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 04:16:20 +0000

Since I didn’t blog in back in 2004, you get to suffer—I mean, enjoy—another breathtaking misadventure down memory lane. In 2004 I started designing and coding (in C++) a cognitive architecture called Biomimetic Emotional Learning Agents (BELA). The Grand Plan This antique diagram reveals my old plans: The diagram indicates general flow of time from [...]

Comparison: ChainLocker vs. Heirarchical Mutexes

Samuel Kenyon — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 06:59:00 +0000

In “Concurrent Programming with Chain Locking,” Gigi Sayfan presents a C# class demonstrating chain locked operations on a hierarchical data structure. This reminded me of lock hierarchies described by Anthony Williams in the book C++ Concurrency in Action. To take a step back for a moment, the overall goal is to create multithreaded code which [...]

On the Concept of Shaping Thought with Language

Samuel Kenyon — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 02:54:47 +0000

Psychologist Lera Boroditsky says she’s “interested in how the languages we speak shape the way we think” [1]. This statement seems so innocent, and yet it implies that language definitely does shape thought1. It also leads us to use a metaphor with “shape.” Causes and Dependencies Does language cause thought? Or at least in part? [...]

What is a Room?

Samuel Kenyon — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 06:52:09 +0000

We all share the concept of rooms. I suspect it’s common and abstract enough to span cultures and millennia of history. The aspects of things that are most important for us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity. (One is unable to notice something because it is always before one’s eyes.) —Wittgenstein Rooms are [...]