Basic Setup — So you have a design for a revolutionary new A.I. that’s been stewing in your mind for months. The time is right, and now you want to put your not-fully-formed idea to the test. You start looking around for pre-built testing environments that include some common challenges. You need these…

Why A.I. seems to lack it — Imagine you asked an A.I. to cook you some food. You might think that’s a straightforward request. When you compare it to more creative tasks like painting, following a cooking recipe is routine. And yet something crucial is missing. Even though you could train it to follow a recipe to…

How to Bridge the Gap Between Them Here’s a snippet from a conversation with a chatbot, made by the team at Facebook. There’s something wrong with the chatbot’s answer. See if you can spot what that is: … User: “What other hobbies does your son have?” Chatbot: “Well he…

A.I. that Thinks Creatively, Part 5 — [This article is a work in progress] Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 In the previous section you saw how you develop skills. Skills help you face and address problems instead of avoiding them. In this final section, you’ll see how the ideas in all the previous sections…

A.I. that Thinks Creatively, Part 4 — Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 5 In the previous article in this series I explained how it is that you learn what experiences to fear and avoid. But you don’t just run away from all your problems. Most of the time you address and solve them. …

Our ability to surface problems, think them through, consider possible actions and come up with a solution is a defining characteristic of our species. It is also one of our greatest strengths. In this fictional case study I describe the steps to build a thinking, problem-solving A.I. from the ground…

How you learn about your own consciousness — As far as you can tell, consciousness is the only thing that separates you from death. When you say that one day you will die, you mean that one day you will no longer be conscious. The feeling of being conscious is therefore valuable to you, even though you have…

What does it mean for A.I. to be aware of what is going on around it? How is that different from simply seeing and hearing things? Awareness Take a moment and turn your attention to what’s going on around you. What noises do you hear? Is there a distant hum of…

Spreading Concepts — [This article is a work in progress] In the first part of this article, I showed how concepts centre around motivations. In this second part I’ll explain how exactly they act on the mind, how you turn them into symbols, and how you use them to reason through problems. Interpreting Your Own Thoughts Consider…