TR-NIS-0005 :2006.3.17

Andrzej BULLER

Machine Psychodynamics: Toward Emergent Thought

Abstract:This report outlines machine psychodynamics - a paradigm of building brains for robots intended to achieve a human-level intelligence. Machine psychodynamics admits that a target robot is to develop its cognitive structure by itself. What is novelty is that the self-development is to be reinforced by pleasure understood as a measurable quantity that rises when a bodily or psychic tension plummets. Machine psychodynamics also proposes that some ambivalence may accelerate a robot's cognitive growth. Mechanisms for pleasure generation and ambivalence jointly make a psychodynamic robot an adventurous creature. A quest of machine intentionality is also addressed and the notion of proto-intentionality proposed.

Keywords: Human-level intelligence, machine psychodynamics, pleasure, adventurousness, ambivalence, proto-intentionality.