Programming Free Will: creative robots

[bananas]

Bjorn Brembs studies free will in fruit flies, here he reviews "a very exciting article":

http://bjoern.brembs.net/news.php?item.778.3

Programming Free Will: creative robots

<snip discussion of a different article in Nature he didn't like>

But enough of the disappointing aspects of this article. I was reminded of it because of a very exciting article by a physicist in Austria, Hans J. Briegel: "On machine creativity and the notion of free will". It displayed a modern understanding of the scientific issues surrounding a materialistic (i.e., scientific) notion of free will and provided a proof of principle of how Free Will may be implemented in physical objects. And these objects don't even have to be biological in origin! As briegel writes:

To put it provocatively, even if human freedom were to be an illusion, humans would still be able, in principle, to build free robots. Amusing.

Amusing indeed! The paper by Briegel elaborates on a method to provide software agents with a degree of freedom without breaking any laws of nature, a method he calls 'projective simulation'.

Briegel claims that Free Will by projective simulation, could, "in principle, be realized with present-day technology in form of <...> robots." Projective simulation means that the robots have a flexible sort of memory that allows the agent to simulate situations that are similar, but not identical to, events that it has encountered before. There are rules according to which these 'projections' can be generated by the robot, so they're not arbitrary, but they contain a degree of randomness (or 'spontaneity') that allows them to "increasingly detach themselves from a strict causal embedding into the surrounding world". Briegel realizes that, in biological systems, much of the required random variability is readily available, but because we don't know how it is being used, we cannot say much about the relevance of it. In fact, with reference to Quantum Indeterminacy, he arrives at almost the same wording as I did in my Proc. Roy. Soc Article:

We may not need quantum mechanics to understand the principles of projective simulation, but we have it. And this is our safeguard that ensures true indeterminism on a molecular level, which is amplified to random noise on a higher level. Quantum randomness is truly irreducible and provides the seed for genuine spontaneity.

It is gratifying to see how close we came of each other, without knowing of each other. Here is my way of putting it:

Because of this nonlinearity, it does not matter (and it is currently unknown) if the 'tiny disturbances' are objectively random as in quantum randomness or if they can be attributed to system, or thermal noise. What can be said is that principled, quantum randomness is always some part of the phenomenon, whether it is necessary or not, simply because quantum fluctuations do occur. Other than that it must be a non-zero contribution, there is currently insufficient data to quantify the contribution of such quantum randomness. In effect, such nonlinearity may be imagined as an amplification system in the brain that can either increase or decrease the variability in behaviour by exploiting small, random fluctuations as a source for generating large-scale variability. 

If this topic is of any interest to you, you really ought to read Briegel's paper!

Basically, the discussion about freedom today has progressed beyond the question of whether it exists (the dualistic notion, everyone agrees, does not), but how it has been implemented in a material world that is powerful and creative enough to not need any supernatural forces. It is sad that this was only briefly touched upon in the Nature piece, when it should have been the very core of the article.

[saras]

1. Confusing science with the religion of scientific materialism is a spectacular error.

It pretty much discredits the whole article.

[Odin2005]

4. "religion of scientific materialism" LOLOLOLOL!!!

What a steaming pantload. :rofl:

[enki23]

2. yet another idiot who doesn't get that a random component doesn't lead to the mythical "free will"

.

[Jim__]

3. I gave Briegle's paper a quick read. Interesting.

Superficially (without having put a lot of thought into it), it seems like humans have something like this type of memory. Certainly we have the ability to recall and modify real situations. That's the part I have to re-read to see what else is required. Then, dreaming, seems to be some type of organizing of the memories of the day and integrating them with already existing memories.

Great post! Thanks.

[Odin2005]

5. A fools errand, there is no such thing as free will.