Computational Modelling of Robot Personhood and Relationality

<p>This SpringerBrief is a computational study of significant concerns and their role in forming long-term relationships between intelligent entities. Significant concerns include attitudes preferences affinities and values that are held to be highly valued and meaningful: The means through which a person may find deeply held identity purpose and transformation. Significant concerns always engage the emotions and senses in a way that simply holding an opinion may or may not. For example experiencing a significant concern may provoke deep feelings of awe and wonder in a way that deciding what to have for lunch probably does not even if the lunch decision involves a rich array of preferences and values. Significant concerns also include what Emmons has called ultimate concerns.</p><p>The author builds upon this base by considering the hypothetical case of intelligence in androids. An android is defined as a human-like robot that humans would accept as equal to humans in how theyperform and behave in society. An android as defined in this book is not considered to be imitating a human nor is its purpose to deceive humans into believing that it is a human. Instead the appropriately programmed android self-identifies as a non-human with its own integrity as a person. Therefore a computational understanding of personhood and how persons ��� whether human or android ��� participate in relationships is essential to this perspective on artificial intelligence.</p><p><i>Computational Modelling of Robot Personhood and Relationality</i> describes in technical detail an implementation of a computational model called Affinity that takes the form of a simulation of a population of entities that form maintain and break relationships with each other depending upon a rich range of values motivations attitudes and beliefs. Future experimentation and improvements of this model may be used not only to gain a wider understanding of human persons but may also form a preliminary cognitive model of the reasoning process of an android.</p><br><p></p>