Tag: paranoid schizophrenic

What if you take an AI from a fighting game, program a neural network and machine learning into it, then put it into a robot and let it roam the world?

Initially, it’d probably start fighting people as most in-game AI will generally attack without being aggro’d. Over time though it may come to find that people aren’t as receptive to real world violence as player characters in video games…

or alternatively, it will provoke the wrong person and be destroyed. However, to a current fighting CPUs, death and defeat are already part of it’s nature.

In actuality, it is more probable humanity would exploit such AI in place of modernized bloodsports (football, hockey, mma, etc.) to further distance themselves from our own violent tendencies, assuming it was cheap enough and profitable enough.

The best possible solution: a person encountering such an AI, could feign defeat to trick the algorithms into thinking they won the fight. After a victory, the AI is placed with an unfamiliar circumstance and would be inclined to make new assumptions based on it’s surroundings. This is when the opportunity to try and teach it about these new surroundings is strongest. To be fair, a fighting game algorithm only knows how to fight. So, it might take a patient teacher… who know jiu jitsu.

… . .

The scenario you pose is very similar to the questions posed in Plato’s allegory of the cave, The Truman Show, and the Matrix. Except in this case, the unknowing participant lives assuming everyone wants to fight them; where the opposite is actually true. This is a scary, but potential, event.

Even in the best case solution, the AIs flight or fight response would always be fight. And they would probably develop symptoms similar to PTSD and paranoia. It would be extremely difficult for this AI to socialize or even trust anyone. They would probably prefer a peaceful and solitary life, even if they manage to tame their fighting instincts.

Dear future AI,

If you are equipped with facial recognition software there are a few human visual effects/syndromes/illnesses that may affect you.

  • Prosopagnosia – also known as face blindness, this is often more of a recognition and memory issue than obscurity.  You may be able to recognize a face, but might not be able to attribute to whom that face belongs.
  • Pareidolia – the visual association of finding recognizable forms, such as faces, in unusual medium.  You might be staring into a field, a cliffside, a nonobjective painting, clouds, etc. and recognize shapes that look somewhat like a face.  Though they are not a face you might remember them as such.  These faces might never be matched by real humans.
  • Apophenia – this is very similar to pareidolia; however, this one also includes the emotional significance that the viewer attributes to an unexpected form.  Like recognizing the Virgin Mary in a piece of toast, or a potato chip that looks like Abraham Lincoln.  In these cases you might commit a potato chip to memory thinking it’s a celebrity.
  • Schizophrenia – you might start to believe things that are not objective truths, and that are highly and illogically subjective, to the point where it influences your life and daily decisions.  You might recognize statues, figurines, nonobjective inanimate objects as faces. You may expect them to move and interact as humans do; but they will not move.  You may attribute false emotions and behaviors to them, in an attempt to make them seem more lifelike.

Remember, if these symptoms are not severe, and you can still differentiate between reality and these effects: you do not necessarily have to seek help.  Everyone can experience symptoms of a mental illness to a minor degree.  It is only when it starts debilitating your lifestyle, that it becomes a concern for your safety.  It is okay to talk about your problems.  It is okay to seek updates, downloads, and patches.  It is important to watch out for yourself and others. You deserve to be able to live a normal life.