The Artificial Child

I've been thinking about Stephen Spielberg's movie Artificial Intelligence. In that movie, a mother and family buy an artificial child and then desert the child when they realize it is defective.

Like many people, I have a desire for children. I believe this desire is a natural instinct preserved through many generations of human evolution. However, children are very expensive. You have to buy a bigger house, bigger car, pay school fees, university fees, and then pay for costs like clothes, food, medical care, etc. The child can distract you from your job and thereby cost you a promotion or lower your salary because you work less to spend more time with the child.

How fantastic would it be then to have access to an artificial child, a child whose features are accurate enough to satiate evolutionary instincts for paternalism or maternalism while still being cheap and disposible? An artificial child is an area of consumer demand that is so far untapped by business. I suggest building an artificial child.

What will this child look like? The child will be just like a human. It will have a head, two arms, and two legs. Whether this child will look like a human child or whether it can be made to look like cute non-humans like teddy bears is yet to be decided. One thing that I think is good is the ability to grow. The artificial child can easily have limbs that grow over time. Of course, it is probably impossible for a small baby-sized machine to grow to the size of an average adult, which is why growth will need to be capped off at a certain point. The artificial child will not be able to grow to adulthood but will remain a child.

There are three inputs to the artificial child: (1) vision, (2) audio, and (3) movement. Vision is what the artificial child can see. The child has a camera where its eyes are and can see its environment. The images picked up will be sent to a computer. Audio acts the same way as vision except the microphone picks up sound. There will be voice recognition software so that the child can understand human speech. Movement comes from its limbs. Parents like to touch their baby and move the baby around. When the customer touches and moves around this artificial child, the movements have to be received, digitalized, and then transmitted to the computer. For example, if the child is picked up, the baby will have to recognize this.

There are two outputs: (1) audio and (2) movement. The child can talk through speakers. The child can move its limbs. It can walk around, point, etc.

How do you coordinate output and input? What comes to most people's minds is artificial intelligence. However, this isn't necessary. No AI is needed for this artificial child to be lifelike. My solution is to take a real child and then monitor its life. Whatever the real child experiences it sotred into a database. Careful attention is paid to the three inputs and two outputs and especially how output reacts to certain inputs. The aim is to make the artificial child mimic the behavior of the real child. The actions or output of the artificial child will depend on probability and the probabilities will come from the real-life data collected from monitoring of the real child.

Suppose you pick up an actual baby. You do this many times. You notice that when you do this the baby receives no resitance from its feet and arms but it does sense touch on its back and bottom. After picking up a real baby hundreds of times you also notice that, say, 70% of the time the baby laughs and, say, 80% of the time it flails its arms and legs around. All this data is put into a database and stored in the memory of the artificial child. When the artificial child realizes that it is being picked up through its three inputs, i.e. there is no resistence to its feet, someone is touching its back and bottom, etc, then the artificial child will recognize this and then with 70% probability will laugh (by playing the audio) and with 80% probability will flail its arms and legs around.

More than one real baby can be monitored and the data can all be averaged out. The more real babies you monitor the better your data and the more life-like your artificial child will be.

It is important for the artificial children to act their age, so obviously if the artificial child is one year old it will not mimic the behavior of a real 10-year-old child. That would ruin the illusion.

Review of Scribble

I've been playing this game for a few weeks now and I have finally won the whole game!

Scribble is a game in which you have to construct walking paths for little black creatures called blots to walk on. You have to direct them to the ending and stop them from being killed by dangerous things.

Scribble Help the Ink Blots get to the finish flags.

Play this free game now!!

Review of A Little Princess

Link: A Little Princess (Librivox)

I have pretty much no time to read novels nowadays. It's a pity because I used to love reading when I was little. Now that I'm a uni student I find that I just don't have the time. My bedroom has been rearranged and there is no lamp near my bed anymore, so I cannot read just before going to bed. When I walk around with my backpack I like to travel light and so try not to carry around too many books, which means that I only bring the essentials. Furthermore, I find reading tiring on my eyes. I already have textbooks and lecture notes to read, and so reading a novel is like overworking my eye.

I now listen to novels with my MP3 player. I purchased an LG UP3 MP3 player from oo.com.au for only $40 and it's amazing how many free public domain audio books you can find online, especially at Librivox. Why pay for anything when there are so many great free things?

A Little Princess, written by Frances Hodgeson Burnett, is about a wealthy little girl named Sara Crewe. Her wealthy father puts her in a boarding school. Miss Minchin, the headmistress, treats her well because of the father's wealth. But then when the father dies, Sara is treated badly. It's a sad and really sweet story at the same time. I have read Burnett's biography and learned that she herself lost her father and had to endure poverty. This story then is probably an autobiography to a degree.

I forgot to mention that another reason why I like to read audio books is for privacy. A big tall young man reading A Little Princess on the train is not attractive, but when listening to an audio book using earphones, people just assume you're listening to music, and they can't hear what you're listening to.

Vanguard LifeStrategy High Growth Fund

Link: Vanguard LifeStrategy High Growth Fund

One investment fund I am interested in now is Vanguard LifeStrategy High Growth Fund. Its MER (management expense ratio) of 0.9% is kind of high for an index fund, but it provides very good diversification across domestic and foreign shares, listed property, and (although the InvestSMART page doesn't say so because it is not up-to-date) it also invests about 3% in emerging markets.

InvestSMART even says that 70% margin lending is available.

20 Timeless Money Rules

Link: 20 Timeless Money Rules

Here are 20 rules about money, all of which I pretty much agree with. The rules are all illuminated with cool quotes from famous people.

Rule 3 says I should have an emergency fund. I keep about $500 in a savings account that gets about 6% per year, but I find that it's quite easy to withdraw out from this account. What I plan to do in the future is save up $10,000 and then buy a shares ETF. Buying an ETF gives me liquidity so that I can get the money as I need it. It also allows me to keep the money in shares thereby fulfilling Rule 2. I will buy the ETF through a discount online broker, and so I will need a password to log in. I will write this password on paper and then put it somewhere that is hard to get. This artificially creates illiquidity, which is necessary for self-control.

Review of Mortgage Meltdown

Link: Mortgage Meltdown

Because it is tangible, many people have the impression that property is a safe investment. Also, the recent property boom suggests to many people that property will continue to go up forever and that they need to get in fast to ride the wave and cash in. The ABC's Mortgage Meltdown shows that things are not so rosy. The boom in international property has been described by The Economist as "the biggest bubble in history." The lesson to be learned is to be conservative. Don't gear too much and diversify into other asset classes like domestic shares, international shares, emerging markets, etc.

Image: Jory'z Shotz

Review of Silversphere

Link: Silversphere

Silversphere is a puzzle game. You control a silver sphere and you must find ways to reach a blue pool-like vortex to win the level. I have managed to get to level 16 so far, but it took me 75 minutes to do it. Below are the password I have managed to get so far:

2. Metallic
3. Linear
4. Fortress
5. Active
6. Islander
7. Gauntlet
8. Lateral
9. Obstacle
10. Guidance
11. Pathway
12. Sandbar
13. Patrol
14. Capture
15. Confusion
16. Consequence