The relationship between HLAI and the human brain

The data structure of a human brain and something like a calculator are totally different. On one hand a calculator can process thousands of equations each second but the human brain processes only 1 equation per second. This doesn’t mean that the calculator is more superior than a human brain. It just means that the brain is a different form of computer that processes information differently. The human brain is a very powerful computer that can learn from past experiences and understand common sense knowledge which is something current computers can’t do.

The human brain consists of 10 billion neurons and 60 trillion connections. The data are stored in the neurons in terms of encapsulation and commonality. Although the brain has only 10 billion neurons it is able to store almost 8,000 trillion data because of the connections that each neuron has with other neurons. The data are also global in nature and each neuron will have associations with other neurons. All of the neurons and their connections are either strengthened or forgotten. The neurons get strengthened by a process of chemical electricity that makes their connections with other neurons stronger (or weaker).

When an object is recognized like an image or a sound, electricity is run through that neuron and its connections. This is how psychologists can understand what parts of the brain does what functions — by using a computer to analyze the electrical activities in the brain. Since there are many sensations coming into our brain each second, there isn’t just one area the brain is active but activity will run in multiple areas of the brain at the same time.

I did some observation of how the brain sends electricity throughout the neurons and came to the conclusion that we can actually simulate this activity in a software. First the brain locates an object (let’s call this object the target object). In this case an object could be anything — it can be an image of a car or a sound of a dog barking. Once the brain locates the target object in memory it runs electricity throughout all of the connections associated with that object. This will strengthen not only the target object that has been located but it will bring all the other objects (call these element objects) closer to the target object.

When the AI locates the three visual objects: A, B, C in memory it will run electricity through these nodes and all of its connections.

The mind has a fixed timeline. Only one element object can be activated at a given time in this timeline. This is how we prevent too much information from being processed and allow the AI to focus on the things that it senses from the 5 senses.

This finding is important because we know that the target object that the brain has located has to be strengthened. This is done by applying chemical electricity through that located target object. The only question I had was: “why did the electricity propagate throughout all of its connections too?”. Would that not strengthen all the element objects around the target object too?

The reason why the brain had to propagate electricity throughout all of the target object’s connections is because that is how the conscious is presented. The conscious is the voice in your head that speaks to you. It also gives you information about a situation, or help you solve a problem, or tell you definition of words. All the element objects from all the target objects will compete with one another to activate in the mind (the mind can only take in a limited amount of information). When that information is activated in the mind a lesser amount of electricity will be applied to that information and its connections. This is how the mind travels from one subject matter to the next.

The brain modifies information by constantly applying chemical electricity throughout all the target objects coming in from the 5 senses. The electricity strengthens not only that target object but it strengthens all the element objects that have association with the target object. This form of storing, retrieving, and modifying information in a network is what allows the host to have human-level intelligence.

Learning from childhood to adulthood and how the pathways become more complex

When the machine is at its early stages of life, it will have to build its pathways from simple data then as it gets older and there are more data in memory it will organize the pathways into complex intelligence. Just like how we humans have to learn to walk, to talk, to move, to eat, these machines have to go through life the same way. Lets illustrate the gradual forming of simple data into intelligent data by outlining a series of stages.

1. innate reflexes

2. trained to do things

3. sequential events

4. sentence commands

5. give robot option commands

6. practice makes perfect

7. copy other peoples behavior

1. innate reflexes

In this stage the robot will learn all the different objects that are in the environment from the 5 senses. Things like cat, dog, table, chair, red, blue, car, house, I, her, him, loud, soft etc. are learned and stored in memory. The 3-dimensional floater of all the objects will be created. Then the robot will start to move its arms and legs from innate built in reflexes. Movement of the arms, the legs, movement of the mouth, and controlling the vocal cords are the things that the robot must learn first. These experiences must be stored in memory in an organized way. Curiosity will be the factor that steers the robot into doing things that it never did before. Things like new objects it never learned before will have top priority over old objects it learned. New sensations will be more focused on then old sensations. By the time the robot learns most of the objects around him its memory banks will be filled with data and things around the robot will be more familiar. Meaning of the objects will also be established.

2. Trained to do things

This part is where a teacher will guide the robot into doing things that are appropriate and to force the robot to learn things that it supposed to know. Things like walking, and grabbing object, and throwing things around must be learned. The guide is used so that the robot will learn important things that it can use to control the environment. A thing like walking is important because you want to get from one destination to another. Writing using a pencil is important because it must learn to write letters. Things like walking and writing and speaking must be learned by a guide because we cant preprogram the robot to learn these things.

Although the guide isnt something we want to store in memory, the point is that the more we guide it the stronger the desired created pathway will be. When it is strong enough it can be used by itself and the guide pathway will be forgotten. The robot will find a way to use the desired created pathway to accomplish a goal. Walking for example, if the robot knows that walking will get it from one destination to the next, then when it sees food, it will use the walking path to go from its current location to the food. Reward is also playing a part in this learning process.

Also, during this process simple sequential consequences will be understood. Things like what is the consequence of dropping a ball, where should the ball be when you drop it, and solid objects and soft objects have different properties.

3. Sequential events

In this stage the robot begins to learn how objects interact with one another. When two objects hit each other both objects suffer, when the robot fall down its painful, when it grabs a solid object it has the same shape, but if it grabs a soft object it bends its shape. So, sequential events will be learned. The consequences of the robots actions in comparison to the environment will also be learned. By learning all these things the individual data in memory will turn more complex and long. The robot will be able to piece together the outcome of an event just by looking at its past. Another thing to remember is that curiosity is the key to new pathways. The more unique the event is the more the robot wants to learn it. The old events it learned many times will be ignored because it learned it already, but the new sensations will guide it to learn new things. Think of curiosity as a form of pleasure and old sensation as pain. Since this robot does things in terms of pleasure it will look for new data from the environment. At this stage things like lying and magic cant be distinguished yet. The robot will not be able to lie yet and if it sees a man flying in the sky or walking on water the robot will think it is real.

4. Sentence commands

This part will require the robot to know basic grammar like the names of most objects that are around the environment. These basic grammar must be thought to the robot and understood by the robot. The rules program will do the rest by assigning the meaning for the grammar. Even hidden objects must be understood like jump, run, walk, loud, soft, etc. Once a basic language is established we can combine sequential events with grammar and force the robot to do things by using words as the tool. An example would be if you said sit and the robot sits. When you say: pick up the book the robot will pick up the book. When you say: read the first paragraph and the robot reads the first paragraph of the book. These are commands that you give to the robot to indicate what you want it to do. There is no deception, or lying involved in the command process. Its simply someone giving a command and the robot taking the action. The robot may not understand what you said and make a mistake, but having a voice in the head that tells the robot to do things hasnt been created yet.

5. Giving the robot option commands

This part is an extension of the last stage. Instead of saying a word and letting the robot do things we can add trees to the command pathways and let the robot decide what it wants to do. This is very affective because trees combined with commands allow the robot to use if statements to accomplish a goal.

So, the tree decides what the robot will do. If a teacher gives the command then the robot will listen, if its a friend that gives the command the robot wont listen. There are also innate likes and dislikes the robot will have and there are commands out there that tap into that kind of thing. For example, if the robot was given this command: pick the food you like to eat. Within the robots memory there are powerpoints that determine an objects worth. PM will tap into that and pick the one with the most powerpoints. Commands like: pick the color you like, eat the food you like, play with the toy you like, buy the present you want, wear the clothes you love, and so forth will all depend on the robot. These likes and dislikes can also be a learned thing.

6. Practice makes perfect

Now, lets get on with a more complex way the pathways can be formed. When we practice something like riding a bike, we are actually creating new pathways to ride the bike. Practicing will help the robot to decide the best newly created pathway to pick to accomplish a goal. We can build a pathway in memory that will treat practicing something as a command.

This simple example shows that by using English we can guide the robot to do infinite amounts of tasks. The above example is a practice pathway. It uses a command that will tell the robot to do something until a desired outcome is present. If it doesnt accomplish the goal then it will repeat itself until the task is completed. At the same time this is happening more trees can be added to this practice pathway like, if you practiced for 7 times and you still didnt accomplish a goal then quite. Or when you are hungry and you dont have the strength to shoot then stop practicing. The existing pathways will add, strengthen, or minus trees from it as the robot learns more. Instead of following commands there are other factors to consider before you take action to accomplish the commands. The robot will do the things that a society will consider appropriate at the time. If a society says it should lie in order to not do the task then thats what the robot will do. If a society says the command isnt appropriate in this type of situation then the robot will not follow it. If the robot finds the command dangerous and it can really damage itself, then it will not carry out the command. This is where the inner voice that is the core of the consciousness is built. The consciousness is the average of the things thought to the robot by society.

7. Copy other peoples behavior

This part is a very powerful tool used to learn things. We can go ahead and train a tree that will allow the robot to copy certain things from what it sees. Things that it sees on TV will be learned and copied by the robot. Copying will allow the robot to learn the most appropriate things to do in a society. When it is in a situation it will do things in terms of what society as a whole did. The way it dresses, the way it behaves in school, the things that it likes/dislikes, how to dress, how to take care of itself, how to get money, how to get food to survive, what to say to certain people, how to make friends, how to get good grades in school, and finding answers to questions. All these things are pathways that were learned by copying other people in our environment.

This part will require not only trees but also relations to past data and innate instructions of the robot. Pattern matching will find these hidden things and put them in the pathways. Something as complex as copying people require that you understand the relationship between the robot and other objects. If other people move their hand, you will copy them by moving your hand. You would need to know that your hand is one object and it belongs to you as an individual and that the other person you try to copy has a hand too and they are an individual too. Also, you have to understand when to copy them. If a copy is one second after you see the person do the action, then one second is the time it takes to copy their action.

From all these pathways we can build on each other and make even more complex thinking such as representing a hierarchy system. Things like parent-child relationships, who is the grandfather of the family, or what does having a brother really mean, will be represented by complex thinking. When people say thats your father, there are lots of complex things we need to know before we can understand that kind of thing. Complex things such as: where do humans come from?, or parents are supposed to take care of their kids or everyone has one female parent and a male parent or the male parent is the father and the female parent is the mother. It is a very complicated intelligent system when it comes to representing a family tree and in order to understand it we must first learn the simple things.

Robotics

The big question is: how are the reflexes and innate traits built into the robot? The answer to the question isnt perfect but we can observe the human body and how it functions and simulate this behavior on the robot. Things such as the taste of a food should yield the same taste for both the human and the robot. Pain and the degree of pain for certain senses should be the same. The attractiveness or the ugliness of objects should be the same too. The field of robotics has already accomplished a lot in terms of making robotic parts similar to human parts. Im sure there are a lot more improvements that can be made to advance the science of robotics in the near future.

Remember, we arent trying to duplicate human behavior exactly, we are trying to create something similar. As long as the traits that humans and robots have are similar they can learn to understand each other. The dissimilar traits between robots and humans can be understood by complex intelligence.

Other topics:

1. Learning language and common sense knowledge
2. AI two-player games using the universal artificial intelligence program

3. Autonomous cars — how the AI will drive in the city

4. Image processing — robot vision