Mind-Modeling and Loving AI Development

We are currently working on extending the Loving AI pilot program to add new functions to the OpenCog AI system related to unconditional love. These functions could be manifested via any reasonably flexible robot or avatar; however, for the immediate future we will continue using Sophia for experimentation and testing. Sophia has particularly strong emotional expression capability and a global media presence, and she is a system our team is familiar with.

The work in 2019 will focus on giving OpenCog/Sophia a genuine “model of mind” for the first time. The goal will be for the AI/robot to build a working internal model of thoughts, feelings, motivations, intentions, etc. of the person with whom it is interacting. This would give a significant boost to the robot’s understanding of people with whom she interacts, which we believe is required for her to genuinely express unconditional love. Of course this initial “model of mind” will not be the same as a typical human’s model of other humans’ minds, but it will be a start in this important direction.

One of the motivations of this work is to lay the groundwork to extend the Loving AI protocol so that the AI can learn about the person as they are interacting and to some extent bring that learning to bear in its statements and questions to the person. This will also allow for repeated sessions with the same person with continuity, as the robot builds and improves its model of the person.

This mind-modeling work integrates emotion-modeling as a result of leveraging and improving the AI framework’s emotion regulation, enabling the AI’s emotions to better reflect and respond to the human’s emotions that it models. This will give Sophia (and any other robots or avatars controlled by the software) richer emotional expression, better emotional connection with others, and the beginnings of an understanding of human emotion in general. All of these are steps toward “skillful means” in expressing and eventually feeling unconditional love.