📝 World Building

Introduction

As I explained in the 📝 Cognitive Research introductory document, intelligence such as that of a human being or any other type of known animal intelligence was brought up by evolution. And I think that we're taking that for granted ignoring the actual origin of these intelligent and autonomous systems.

Manually building and designing a world that's able to host a specific type of artificial life is the equivalent to creating the substrate in which rich complexity can emerge.

I believe that by being deliverate and intentional about the rules for such a world where artificial minds exist, we can ensure the goal of having minds that can collaborate with us in our digital environments and catapult us into a revolutionary future of artificial general intelligence (AGI).

Why desiging worlds is important

Digital worlds don't emerge out of plain bits in computers. The best way to think about digital worlds is comparing them to video games. Within a video game, you design a set of specific constraints that the player needs to overcome in order to get some reward. The process in which the player gains this reward could be anything that the game designer wants.

As world designers, we need to be specific about what we want the player/character/artificial mind to do for us, and in turn we'll reward them through survival (food, shelter, etc) an animal-type mechanism of reward, etc. This is where a 📝 Cognitive Architecture can start to be formed.

So the first step is to know what we need from them. In my case, I want to create more software tools and games, and customize my own tools as well. I want to do less digital chores like organizing my 📝 Digital Items (i.e. files). I want it to help me debug my programs, and help me create visualizations. In general, I want to spend less time writing software that can be automated with natural language so that I can focus on the creative part. But these are long-term personal requirements specific to the domain of personal computing. Another personal example is that I want to create artificial minds that will become NPCs in my video games. I'm sure that there are endless use cases for having digital beings.

Technical roadmap and ideas

One crucial component of this concept of world building is the i/o and APIs. To enable interaction between humans and these digital beings and their world, we'll need APIs that can help us materialize information into their world. It's also the other way around, APIs that can give us specific information about them and their world.

I've been playing with some ideas in a rather unorganized fashion in this 🧠 Brain dump for the first world prototype. My work, in general, is the process of familiarizing myself as much as I can with the concepts I'm developing through experimentation and prototypes.

As I continue to discover more meaningful constructs, I'll document them here and index other helpful content as well.

Divine Intervention Interface Design

Yes, it sounds pretentious but I have currently no better term. So let me explain the two parts of this concept:

Why is it "divine"?

💡 Divine Intervention is a concept that explores the interaction between humans and artificial beings through events or entities in their 💡 Artificial Worlds. It's "divine" in the sense that the intervention comes from out of that world and produces inexplicable effects in it.

Interface Design as in UI Design

In order to successfully interact with any digital world, we need to have an interface that allows us to do that. Given the richness of interactions that socially intelligent beings may have, such an interface would not be easy to design. This is why Divine Intervention Interface Design is an important research space. It will be a crucial tool for 💡 Developmental Training.