The Creator's Mind

Lately, I have been delving into the world of artificial intelligence.  I find myself endlessly fascinated by the attempt to replicate the processes of the human mind.  Besides the interesting ways that people go about trying to create intelligence, the basic approach always goes back to the study of the human mind.

So not surprisingly, my study thus far has been mostly of philosophy and psychology.  The more I learn about the attempt to create a mind, the more I learn about my own mind.  With my tendency to think of things in simple math terms:  I'd assume that the limit as my knowledge of AI approaches a working prototype, my understanding of my own mind should approach completion.  Could I ever understand my own mind enough to make an artificial copy?  Or, in the more likely case, should I be unable to understand my own mind: could I create a mind not entirely based on my own?  In an extremely unlikely scenario, could an artificial mind be synthesized that is better than the human mind?

Do not mistake me: I am not so arrogant as to think that I can do these things.  In all honesty, I simply hope to learn enough about my mind to make a better person of myself.  I hope to learn enough about the subject of artificial intelligence to remove the necessity for humans to perform a few difficult or dangerous tasks.

I wonder what it was like for God to create intelligence minds.  As I understand it, angels also have free will - so I wonder what it was that He made different about men.  Curious, He made us in His image?  What does that mean?  Does it have to do with the mind?  With intelligence or will?  Perhaps the ability to create?

Well, rather than leave you with these unanswered questions, here's some tidbits from my studies:


"As a general rule, it is better to design performance measures according to what one actually wants in environment, rather than according to how one thinks the agent should behave."

"Which is better - a reckless life of highs and lows, or a safe but humdrum existence?"

"[...R]ationality is not the same as perfection.  Rationality maximizes expected performance, while perfection maximizes actual performance[...]if we expect an agent to do what turns out to be the best action after the fact, it will be impossible to design an agent to fulfill this specification - unless we improve the performance of crystal balls or time machines."

~"Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach" by Stuart Russell and Peter Norvig