AIPatterns

Pandemonium
-- Architecture
-- Original
-- for Abstraction
-- for Problems

Emotions
-- Emotion Patterns

C++ Implementation

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Emotion - a general AI Pattern

In this model... An emotion, in a mind, can be viewed as a mechanism for making decisions. Emotions are an alternative to hard-wired behavior; they provide a simple way of implementing complex and subtle decision-making. An example...

A deer is eating some nice grass, but listening, smelling and watching for signs of danger. Signs of danger increase its fear. If it becomes sufficiently afraid, it runs away.

It is simpler to hard-code a bunch of independent reasons to be more afraid than it is to hard-code when a deer should run away. You get more sophisticated behavior with less complexity.

Emotions for AI Patterns

Fear

Fear is neutral to negative -
if there is significant fear associated with an option, the fear acts to discourage choosing the option. On the other hand, some options (like running away) become more attractive with increasing fear.

Purpose:
to avoid action that involves know risks.

Aspects:

• default neutral
• if something poor or worse is noticed in the problem domain, then current-fear becomes more negative
• if fear hasn't increased recently, then fear decreases a little
• if a particular situation in the problem domain that has been making fear increase suddenly is no longer a problem, then fear decreases substantially

Greed

Greed is neutral to positive -
if there is significant greed associated with an option, the greed acts to encourage choosing the option. Greed decreases slowly if the associated option is repeatedly not chosen. Maybe; it gets subtle.

Purpose:
to encourage action to take advantage of a known benefit.

Aspects:

• default neutral
• Greed (sometimes?) goes up sharply when an evaluation reveals a highly positive possible result
• Greed decreases slowly if the associated option is repeatedly not chosen. Maybe; it gets subtle.

Curiosity

Curiosity is neutral to positive - if there is significant curiosity associated with an option, the curiosity acts to encourage choosing the option.

Purpose: to encourage trying new things.

Aspects:

• Generally starts fairly high and decrease as the time available to solve the problem decreases.
• If no acceptable solution has been found, and the time available to solve the problem is growing short, curiosity goes sharply higher
• Unsatisfied greed associated with a decision increases curiosity. On the other hand, if it seems that the best option for a decision has already been identified, the curiosity associated with that decision will be low.