DynaPsych Table of Contents

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What Must a World Be That a Humanlike Intelligence May Develop In It?

Ben Goertzel


February 2009





The paper is here in PDF form

Abstract:
Among those who believe that richly embodied AGI is a promising path to creating AGI systems displaying human-level general intelligence, the possibility of virtual-world embodiment, as opposed to real-world robotic embodiment holds considerable appeal. Here we consider the question of what properties a virtual world should have in order to constitute an adequate environment for the cognitive development of a human-like, human-level general intelligence. We ask what properties a virtual world must have so that an AGI embodied in that world could viably infer humanlike theories of naive physics and folk psychology, and carry out tasks typically required in cognitive development tasks and preschool play centers. Based on these considerations we suggest a "minimal adequate environment" we call "BlocksNBeadsWorld," in which agents can construct objects from blocks using adhesives, and can also fill containers, coat objects and create fabrics and substances with various sorts of differentially adhesive beads.