The sequel to Nano-Uncertainty, More Uncertainty, looks at whether or not an AI can represent emotions, and, if so, could those representations be used to control the AI’s actions.
While listening to a fascinating discussion on Forum, https://ww2.kqed.org/forum/2017/04/11/emotions-are-a-construct-of-the-brain-says-psychologist-lisa-feldman-barrett/ with Lisa Feldman Barrett, one of the call-in-ers mentioned to her that he worked in AI and his project was to see if emotions could be used to control an AI.
Guess I’m not the first person to think of this idea, but, hopefully, I’ll be one of the first to put it in a novel.
Here’s a book on the subject: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-009-2792-6_12. At $439.00 for the book, I think I will wait for the movie.
Whether or not we can create robots capable of emotion has been a meme in science fiction for a long time. Taking it a step further to explore how it could be used to manipulate a robot is a very interesting slant on the idea.
When one combines this with the issue of dialogue vs. prose you could end up with something really different. One of my favorite writers, Elmore Leonard, is famous, indeed glorified, for his ability to construct stories almost completely from dialogue. And at the same time create very real three dimensional characters. At the other end of the spectrum is another fine writer, Jim Harrison, who, in books like Farmer,creates characters that don’t have much to say but have complex inner lives.
Al Fisher
Lisa Feldman says that emotions are mapped in the brain as patterns. I was playing with the idea of patterns in the structures built in the AI. The next logical next step is to have something that can query structures. If you can query structures, then you can link structures.
That seem to be where More Uncertainty is headed. I’ll know more how when James gets through a few more chapters. The ideas emerge as the character develops.