Absolutely. Actually, self-awareness can be said to already have been
implimented if you look into robotic systems, especially automated
battlefield systems, that keep track of their physical/operational
stati. They even are `aware' of themselves as `battlefield assets' and
autonomous units, which would seem to overcome at least one class of
objections to self-awareness as defined by the masses.
> "Learning" is a simple process to model on a computer: just remember the
> losing situations and before making a (random) decision consult the losing
> situation (constantly growing) table, and if it's there, try another one, etc.
Or remember winning ones, or evaluate a position based purely on
experience and extrapolate.
> *repute* -- how is that for a replication (reproduction) with mutation?,
> "repute", "replutation", ("reputation" would be better, but it's taken,
> "reprutation" sounds weird); or for "copy with mutation" we can use
> "coputation" (not "computation" and not "copulation" :-)), "copute" ? "repute"?
Ewwww. Recompute? Breed?
> How would a modelling self-awareness software look like?
> (We've got two years to do it...) Where do we start?
> Are you a software person, Alex?
Depends on what you want in self-awareness. Myself, I think human-like
self-awareness would just get in the way of getting Real Work Done(tm),
but ...
They /say/ I'm a software person, /I/ say I'm an Abstraction Engineer.
:)
--
Alexander Williams{thantos@alf.dec.com/zander@photobooks.com}
The Mekton is a powerful tool, both physically and emotionally.
There is something that happens to an enemy when he sees his home
and family stepped on by a hundred ton metal man. -- Arkon Verian
====================================================================
Of all the weapons of the Empire, the greatest and most respected
were the Metal Knights. These Knights had served the leaders of the
Bendar for Generations, righting wrongs and bringing fear to the
Empire's Enemies. It is said that these metal giants were shaped
like men so that the alien servants of Evil would know that it was
Man who defeated them.
-- Scribings from the Murian Archives