Seeing Is...

Individually as a person, consciousness is the closest to our experience, but least known to our knowledge. Often people wrongly take this close subjective experience as objective knowledge of mind, hence believe in many crazy ideas for thousands of years. Now, research and evidences from neuroscience, cognitive science and AI show a different picture. This is looking at some simple details/facts about our vision as an example.

How do we see the world? Our eyes convert light waves into electrical signal and send it to the brain. From this signal, different patterns are recognized such as lines, edges, borders, shades, colors, objects, things, faces, persons, motion, etc. How are these patterns recognized by the brain? As we grow up, these patterns are slowly learned step by step and stored as NC-s (Neuronal Circuitry). These NC patterns are models of the world. Ultimately, we perceive these models. The following simple illusions vividly show the difference between the reality and our brain constructed models.

(Click on the pictures to maximize it)

(Both images are exactly same)

(Color of A and B are exactly same. Take a printout of it, then cut the two areas and place them side by side)

(This is just a static image, no motion)

(Hollow Face. This is not a trick. As face is usually projected outwards, our brain sees even the hollow side as the projected outward face )

If seeing is recognizing different patterns from the light signal, then how do we see immediately? We do not see immediately. It takes approximately 50 milliseconds to start recognize something. Different elements of visual recognition such as color, motion, etc. are recognized at different locations in the brain and it takes different time duration to recognize them (includes both serial and parallel computations). So, we actually never see live (always delayed) and never see continuously. A snapshot of visual image is taken approximately every 50 milliseconds and processed. Our brain creates an illusion of continuity. That is why we can enjoy movies – continuous snapshots of picture frames as motion picture!

If recognizing different things takes time, how do we recognize so many things so fast, for example when we enter a room? This is also an illusion. We do not recognize all things immediately. Based on the context and history, our brain uses already stored templates and fills different things one by one depending on the needs and importance. That is why it takes a while to find the differences between two similar images.

(Find the Face in the Beans)

(If you still can't find the face, a hint: at the bottom. Please try the following test sincerely)

(Major percentage of people miss it. Older people miss it easily. Though we seem to see the entire picture, our brain picks certain things and misses others depending on the situations)

Brain neuronal pulse cycle speed is in the order of tens to few hundreds of hertz (compare to Giga-hertz of current computer speed). Then, how does the brain recognize things so fast? As mentioned earlier, the brain uses many techniques such as parallel computation, template filling, etc. Why is neuronal pulse cycle speed limited? Neurons use chemical ions to charge and discharge to create electric pulses. Building up this charge potential (action potential) takes certain time. Moreover, the brain consumes huge amount of energy to function (as high as our legs). So, the brain normally works at certain minimum required speed that is needed for our normal day to day operations. But during certain high-alert critical situations (such as escaping from a danger or an accident), the brain works faster than normal speed, and hence it can process/recognize lot more information. During this period, things seem to go in slow motion. Action in the external world goes at the same speed. Since the brain processes it faster than usual speed, things seem to go in slow motion. Perhaps, most of the good sports players able to do this during simulated situations such as sports games. As we get older, this brain speed slowly goes down and hence older people perceive outside world as going faster.

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For more information:
http://sites.google.com/site/artificialcortext/brain/visual-pathways-pics
https://sites.google.com/site/artificialcortext/brain/retina-rods-and-cones
http://sites.google.com/site/artificialcortext/consciousness/consciousness-lecture-by-prof-christof-koch-caltech

Design of Intelligence

The simplest process to find solutions or design anything is a random process – design by a random chance! This is like winning a lottery ticket. This is like building a cubes-tower by throwing few cubes on a floor. If one repeats it many, many times, it may happen at one point. This is like how different sort of figures appear on clouds by random chances. Depending on many factors and conditions, the probability may vary from very low to very high – that is, from highly random to highly determined. (There is randomness in our universe at different levels. In any case, if anything is influenced by vast amount of factors, that would also produce characteristics of randomness)

It requires extremely suitable conditions including correct temperature and pressure for carbon atoms to combine together to form a diamond. However rare this might be, these conditions may happen somewhere, sometime in this vast universe, in this vast cosmological time, and hence we see diamonds in this universe. That is how everything in the universe might have formed including first DNA like molecule. But all the designs in this universe are only a very tiny fraction of countless other possibilities.

The specialty about DNA like structure is that it keeps the blueprint (or model or code) of the design – the design of the life form. As it multiplies (reproduction), the original design information mostly preserved except few random mutations (mistakes). Though most of the mutations are not suitable, some rare mutations may happen to create a design that is suitable to the environment. Hence those designs survive and move on to next generations; and others die out. Over the course of time, these suitable designs are accumulated and created life form from bacteria to fishes and plants to animals including humans. This design process is known as evolution.

Random chance is still the fundamental design discovery process. But evolution process has two important additional features:

• It stores/accumulates the previous design information (in the DNA)
• It shares the design information (Sharing happens only in sexual reproduction. Without this, good genes cannot spread across the population and bad genes cannot be eliminated. So, without sexual reproduction, i.e. without sharing design information, it is almost impossible for any complex organisms such as animals to evolve)
  

As evolution process stores the previous designs, it is essentially a learning process. The basic steps of any learning process:

• Random Design: Randomly produce many, many designs (This occurs because of random mutations)
• Selection: Select only the suitable designs (Only suitable to the environment survives)
• Accumulation: Store and accumulate the suitable designs (in the DNA)
  

Because of these reasons, the evolution process produces from simple designs to more and more complex designs - as complex as human brain! The brain fundamentally simulates a similar learning process in its simulated virtual world. But the brain has two major advantages:

• It can create random designs many, many times faster compare to reproduction and its mutations
• It has way sophisticated storage than DNA.

The brain functions as per its neuronal circuitry (NC) or neural network. It comes with some inborn circuitry designed through life evolution process and others are created from life experience/learning. The brain learning process can be visually understood from watching how children learn to stand and walk.

• Random Design: Trial and error method. Continuous training/practice (Trying different ways to stand and walk)
• Selection: Select the suitable NC design that maximizes the correct outcome (Based on sensory input data especially by comparing the balancing signals – from the liquid levels of both ears; vision data might also be used. But what sensory data is relevant for a purpose itself is part of the learning process)
• Accumulation: Store and accumulate the suitable NC designs (fine-tune and extend the NC)
  

The brain comes with some rudimentary inborn NC for stand and walk. Let us refer this NC1. NC1 is used when children try to stand and walk. When it happens to find a better balancing position, it may solidify those neuronal connections in the NC1. This would lead to a modified NC, NC2. This is known as online learning [NC1 --> NC2]. Apart from this, the brain may store the information about each body positions and corresponding sensory data in a temporary memory. Let us refer this as test data. When the body is in idle condition, as in sleep, the brain can take this test data and try it through NC2 many, many times. In each trial, the brain can randomly modify NC2 and test it with the test data and select the suitable NC designs and fine-tune and extend NC2 step by step. This is known as offline learning [NC2 --> NC3]. Offline learning should be one of the important functions of sleep (Likely happens during REM sleep). This process is repeated every day over and over for years for children to stand and walk normally. There is another important part to this process: adult/parent encouragement, supervision and help – without this, a child may be forever crippled.

Apart from genetic and other environmental differences that may lead to different brain capability and development, each child learns and modifies the NC differently as random design discovery will be different. At the end, though there are similarities across everybody's NC for stand and walk, there will be unique differences among them, which we call it individuality!

Learned NC is referred as memory. The brain memory is divided into two broad categories: Procedural memory (or implicit memory or muscle memory) and Declarative memory (or explicit memory). Learning to stand and walk is one example for procedural memory. This also includes running, dancing, swimming, bicycling, driving, etc. Procedural memory is created when we learn to do something. Declarative memory is created when we learn to recognize (or sense) sensory input data. This includes vision, hearing, sensing smell, sensing taste, etc. Learn to recognize fundamentally deals with pattern recognition.

• Random Design: Continuous trial and error method (Different ways to recognize patterns)
• Selection: Select the suitable NC designs that recognize different patterns (Based on sensory input data)
• Accumulation: Store and accumulate the suitable NC designs (fine-tune and extend)
  

(*** Many children under certain age draw human picture without body. It likely that children may first learn to recognize important patterns such as face and limbs. And then slowly further learn to recognize other parts)

Step by step, this learning process slowly builds a model of the world as NC representations (Like how an audio sound is stored or represented in a magnetic disk or computer disk) with all its hierarchies, relationships, associations, abstractions (generalization), cause and affects, etc. This allows us to make sense of the world. This leads to reasoning and understanding. This allows us to learn to learn better (learning new learning processes and techniques). This allows us to plan and solve known, similar and related problems.

How can the brain solve a totally new problem? The brain has the world model. Now it can simulate the random (and evolution) process. It can throw all random crazy ideas and test it with the model continuously (as a background process). When an idea or solution happens to match and solve the problem, it is a eureka moment! The secret of a genius lies in how effectively someone's brain builds a better world model, which leads to high probability to solve a totally new problem and gain a new insight.

These abilities of the brain such as learning, abstract thinking, understanding, reasoning, planning, problem solving, etc. are collectively referred as intelligence. With this intelligence, humans create many designs with Planning and Control. And that is intelligent design!

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May 15, 2011

Two major parts of computation:

• Data (Declarative memory)
• Process (Procedural memory)
  

Different types of learning:

• Online learning
• Offline learning (like REM sleep learning)
• Supervised learning (like guidance from Parent, adult, teacher, etc.)
• Unsupervised learning
  

Input --> Learning --> Data (changing to data and its hierarchies, relationships and associations)
Input --> Learning --> Process (changing processes including that are part of learning. That is changing processes recursively)

Some components of Learning:

• Working memory (WM) is a kind of short term memory (STM) that is currently relevant and active
• Context is some sort of background or domain information
• Attention is a kind of filter that focuses the relevant information
  

Once certain thing is learned, it becomes a automatic process. Many such automatic processes can run in parallel without attention/consciousness awareness. Consciousness is a serial process that is associated with handling novel input and learning.

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*** I think, this is Marvin Minsky observation.

Humans and other species

Some of the worst sufferings and miseries such as child labor, slums, millions of children die because of hunger, etc. only belong to humans. These are not seen in other species. Though humans are at the top level on the tree of the evolution, though they are the most intelligent species on the earth, yet they have gone to such a low level compare to other species, why?

When copies are produced (reproduction) of anything, some mistakes may occur. If a mistake produces an effect that happens to be suitable to its environment, it survives and moves on to next generations, others die out. As a sculptor removes unwanted things to create a design, things that are not suitable to the environment die out and hence certain design develops as a result. This kind of design is known as evolution. Ultimately, the evolution of genes (living organisms) and the evolution of memes (concepts/ideas) determine the life of humans. (Roots of Beliefs)

Evolution moves towards the environment. But the environment changes continuously. Accordingly the route of evolution also changes continuously. So, depending on the environmental changes, living organisms change, die and emerge to maintain the equilibrium (Here, it is not possible to produce millions of children and let them starve to death). For this kind of design or development, there is no need for any intelligence. As evolution happens without any intelligent control...without any planning, in general it is imperfect and discontinuous with many mistakes and weaknesses. That is how, all the living organisms are including humans and their brain, emotions and intelligence!

With intelligence, a better solution can be discovered…invented than the evolution. And hence, slowly intelligence is evolved. It is a strategy to understand the secrets of nature and predict its changes to make suitable accommodations. With their intelligence, humans can find better solutions than the evolution, and they did find better solutions. That is how they escaped many natural dangers and sufferings. They made tools, built houses, cultivated agriculture and eradicated many deadly diseases. But these things did not happen in a day or a generation. Because their intelligence is not totally different from the other animals, but just slightly better. Ancient humans lived in the jungle more or less led a life like monkeys. There is no big difference between the brains of ancient humans to modern humans. Then, where does the development of modern humans come from? It comes from the evolution of memes. As it requires a sophisticated language to make copies of memes (concepts/ideas) from one from brain to other, it happens in humans societies. Hence, the scientific and technological developments, and many social, religious, government artifacts are seen in the human societies, not in other species.

When humans create and develop good memes, it raises the level of humanity, and when they create and develop bad memes, it brings down the humanity below the level of other species. Just like genes, many kinds of memes (good, bad, useless, etc.) are being produced continuously. The memes that are suitable to the social environment evolve further and others die out. It is difficult to control the production of new memes. How to control the thoughts and ideas of every individual human being? Moreover, stopping the production of new memes means stopping the growth as well. But it is possible to create a social environment where the good memes can evolve healthily, not the bad memes. However, as it is difficult to totally get rid of some bad genes, it may be difficult to totally get rid of some bad memes. In any case, when humans create a social environment where bad memes cannot grow so healthily at minimum, then they can avoid going below the level of other species.


Achilles: High population is one of the main reasons for many of the sufferings today. Perhaps population was in control because of continuous wars and many epidemic diseases before.

Tortoise: There is also a major meme that is responsible for this huge population growth.

Sexual reproduction is highly complex and comes with huge costs (twofold cost of sex). Hence, this kind of population growth cannot happen easily. Though that is the drawback of sexual reproduction, it has many other advantages and hence it is evolved. Its main goal is to mix the genes in the population. As this creates verities in the population, harmful germs cannot infect all the people at the same time, the same way (Else, a newly formed virus may destroy the entire population). This controls the spread of infectious diseases. Also, sexual reproduction helps to weed bad mutations (else they accumulate) and spread good mutations across the population. So, in general, sexual reproduction is evolved to avoid close relatives or individuals with similar genes (less attraction).

Naturally it is difficult to find a right partner. So, humans created a meme, marriages arranged by parents; to make it further simpler, marriages within the same castes and religions; and to make it even further simpler, marriages with close relatives.

Achilles: Now they have reproduced like viruses and destroying all other species and natural environment. This arrangement, not only hinders finding similar genes, it enforces marriages between the similar genes. What kind of generations we have been producing for so many centuries?! Though humans enjoy the life beyond other animals in so many dimensions with music, arts, dance, poetry and researches, yet how can they keep aside poetry like love from their life? Surprising!?!

Another surprising meme, caste system... How is it evolved? How did majority of the people put up with it for so many centuries?

Tortoise: A shocking one, child widow! What hell on the earth such a meme could possibly evolve?! How did the young girl's parents, brothers, sisters, grandparents, relatives and fellow humans bear with it?!

Achilles: Ignorance, unnecessary fear, blind-faiths, etc. should be the reasons for these memes to evolve. Humans are like sheep herd. Right or wrong, they just run with the crowd. As it is the safest route for an individual to be successful. So, it takes certain minimum percentage of people in the population to come out, recognize it, and say it courageously.

Tortoise: There are some fundamental problems in the social environment that encourage such bad memes to evolve healthily. Even few simple characteristics are sufficient enough to destroy the evolution of all these bad memes:
- Just saying, 'I do not know', when one does not know.
- Just recognizing, 'Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence'.

Life Game

Game theory is a branch of applied mathematics that is used in many fields including the social sciences, economics, biology (evolution and ecology), engineering, political science, international relations, computer science, social psychology, philosophy (morality) and management. In game theory, there is a fundamental problem known as the prisoner's dilemma (PD). Here is an example of the PD:

Say, you and your new partner in burglary are captured near the scene of a burglary by the police. The police have insufficient evidence for a conviction. So, they separate you both in a different cell and offer the same deal. If you confess and your partner remains silent, you go free and your partner receives 10-year sentence, and vice-versa. If you both confess, you both receive 5-year sentence. If you both remain silent, you both receive 6-month sentence. What do you do?

If you both cooperate and remain silent, it is good for both of you. But, what if your partner defects you? In order to avoid the worst outcome, your rational choice is to defect.

PD can be summarized as below:


PD can be generalized as below:


PD can be used as a cost benefit analysis with points [benefit – cost]. Say, an animal A may help (with an expense of some cost) another animal B and hoping to get some help in return (benefit) from B in the future. But B may or may not help. In some cases, this can make a difference between life and death. For example, Vampire bats feed on blood at night. It is not easy for them to get a meal all the time, but if they do it is likely to be big one. Every day, some individuals will return completely empty, might starve to death. Often the lucky bats help the unlucky ones.

Let us give some points as an example (Note that the points only matter relative to each other, not the actual values). Say, the cost of help is 10 points, and the receiver gets the benefit of 15 points. If A helps B and gets no help from B in return, then A's total outcome: [benefit–cost = 0-10 = -10]. If A helps B and gets help from B in return, then A's total outcome: [benefit-cost = 15-10 = 5]. If A gets help from B and does not help B in return, then A's total outcome: [benefit-cost = 15-0 = 15]. This can be summarized as below:


If this game is played once, then A's rational choice (probabilistically safer bet) is to defect and not help B. But what if the game is played iteratively over and over again and A plays with not just B and many others at different times. Now, what is the successful strategy? American political scientist Robert Axelrod did a computer simulation for it. The idea is to take different strategies and convert them into computer programs; they play with each other continuously (this is something similar to what happens in animal population in evolutionary time). Many strategies were submitted by different institutions, scientists and mathematicians; some are simple and others are highly elaborate complex strategies. Though a successful strategy depends on the relative cost benefit points, other strategies in the population and many other factors, a simple robust strategy known as Tit-for-Tat is found to be a successful strategy. Tit-for-Tat strategy begins by cooperating on the first move and thereafter simply copies the previous move of the other player.

It can be analyzed why Tit-for-Tat is a successful strategy. Always cooperating strategy can be easily beaten by any defecting strategies in the population. Always-defecting strategy can be successful, if the population is filled with many cooperate strategies. Though Tit-for-Tat-except-first-defect strategy (first move defect and then behave like Tit-for-Tat) avoids losing from defecting strategies, but gains little with other carefully cooperating strategies like Tit-for-Tat. Tit-for-Tat strategy gains from other cooperating strategies and loses little from defecting strategies.

Axelrod describes many characteristics of Tit-for-Tat strategy. It is a 'nice' strategy, as it cooperates first. It is a 'forgiving' strategy, as it has a short memory for past misdeeds – only cares about last move of the other player. It is also 'not envious', as it does not strive for more points at others expense. But it is 'not a saint' strategy, as it does not cooperate unconditionally forever. Life is much more complex and involves many other factors. Yet, this gives some basic idea about how strategies like cooperation, helping others, being nice, forgiving and not envious might have been evolved in animals including humans.

This is our life game. Though we play this game with one another, we often fail to recognize it at bigger levels such as between groups, organizations, companies and nations. Unfortunately, most of the games (sports) we created are zero-sum games where one's gain is another one's loss.


Achilles: So, these evolutionary games become part of our behaviors. Before jumping to zero-sum games, why do we just play? Kids love to play... Why?

Tortoise: Playing is actually a serious business. It is evolved as an important learning strategy. That is how kids explore the world and test the water! That is how kids (humans and other animals) learn about the world (its characteristics, cause and effect, space and time, etc.), and what works and not.

Achilles: Why do adults play game?

Tortoise: We created many games as part of our further learning/training that were useful for our survival. Human’s early games are linked with using our survival tools such as using swords, throwing stones, bowing arrows, etc. The real practical values of games were slowly separated and disappeared. Now, most of the games stand on their own without any real practical values.

Achilles: But, games are good exercise and they promote healthy life style.

Tortoise: Games are good exercise, if we use them at right level. Most of the professional players are over doing it (harmful over exercise), if not using harmful drugs. Games are good exercise, if we promote everyone to play instead of just watching.

Achilles: It is entertaining to watch games. But I do think it is a good idea to have some non-zero-sum games and practically useful games.

Tortoise: In any case, we should just go out, play and enjoy our game and be sportive about it. Playing is a serious business and it is useful when it is playful!

Robotic Life

From continuous countless changes, a few that are happened to be suitable to the environment survive and move on to next generations. Others die out. Over the course of long time, the few that survived look as if someone suitably designed them...created them for the environment. This natural selection process designed many survival robots such as bacteria, plants and animals including humans! Their design is in their genes (DNA).

The fundamental goals of these life robots are to survive and reproduce, because only those can exist. Every part of our body, every thoughts in our mind, and every goals of our life are formed from the same fundamental goals.

We need food to survive. And we need legs to search for it, hands to catch and hold it, eyes and nose to recognize it, and mouth to eat it. We need nervous system and brain to control and activate all these parts of our body.

Before the water level in our body goes critically low, our brain has to warn us with thirst. Before the nutrients level in our blood goes critically low, the brain has to warn us with hunger. Before our body cells getting damaged from extra heat, it has to reduce the heat by sweating. Before our body cells getting damaged from extra cold, it has to increase the heat by shivering. Our brain has to create sexual thoughts for reproduction and prepare our body accordingly.

When our legs function, we call it walking. When our brain functions, we call it mind. Our brain consumes as much as energy as our legs (25%). So, it has to function at a normal speed. But, during critical situations such as escaping from danger, it has to increase its speed to process more information at a shorter time. Our brain has to analyze and weigh the risks and rewards of everything. But, once it is decided to fight with an enemy, our brain has to turn-off the weighing part to focus all its energy preparing for the fight. We call this mental state as anger. That is why we say: "when anger comes, wisdom goes" and "Anger is a brief madness". Our brain has to analyze and criticize the positives and negatives of everything. But, it has to turn-off the criticizing part on our romantic partner. We call this mental state as romantic love. That is why we say: "Love is blind". That is why we see this world as beautiful and perfect when we are in love. In general, our brain has to constantly analyze and research many things. That is why, our mind wanders around easily. But we have to focus our attention when comes to our children to understand what is good and bad for them, and spend our energy accordingly. We call this mental state as parental love.

Our brain has to remember new events from our experiences. It has to learn new information and new skills. Apart from these functions, it has to know its own mental or emotional states to control their default responses and apply new information and skills. It has to know, what it knows and does not know. It has to know, its strengths and weaknesses. We call this awareness. This is how, we execute the commands written in our brain by our genes. This is our robotic life! When this robot functions, we call it life and when it can no longer function, we call it death.

Achilles: But, now days, we can bring life back even after breathing and heart stopped...?

Tortoise: A bacterium is a single cell species. If any part of its cell is damaged or any of its chemical reaction is tampered, that will be its death. We are multi-cells species, made up of trillions of cells. If one or few cells are damaged, our body can replace them. But if an important organ itself is damaged, that will damage cells in other parts of our body and slowly entire body will be disabled. If lungs or heart stopped, our body cells slowly start dying. Using external stimulation or artificial heart and breathing, we may bring life back. Considering today’s medical technology, perhaps our death may be pronounced when most part of our brain cells are died, as we discovered some alternatives for other parts of our body. In the future, we may discover some alternatives for our brain too.

Hypothetically... say, you lost your hands and legs, and now you are attached with artificial limbs. Is this still you? (It is possible to decode the brain signal and use it to control the artificial limbs. Though there are many technical difficulties, we have achieved this to an extent for artificial hands, legs, ears, eyes, etc.)

Achilles: Yes, still me.

Tortoise: The brain cells need continuous supply of good blood to function normally. Say, all your body organs such as heart, lungs, etc. are removed and good blood supply is artificially given to your brain. Is this still you?

Achilles: OK, still me.

Tortoise: We know the fundamental functions of the brain cells (neurons). We can replace a single cell or multiple cells with an electronic chip (we have already done this in rats and monkey brain cells; and some deep brain stimulation in humans). If each and every cell in your brain is replaced with proper electronic chips, you will just function as you do now. Is this still you?

Achilles: Hmm... I think so!

Tortoise: Now you just need an electric power source such as a battery.

Achilles: But, the robots we create do not seem to function like living things...?

Tortoise: In nature, life is designed at nanotechnology level (atoms and molecules level). We have just entered into nanotechnology. Yet, other technologies can also offer many good solutions. Every method has its own strengths and weaknesses. Animals use legs that are designed with bones and thousands of muscles controlled by complex nervous system to move. We use wheels in our motor vehicles. Like birds, we created airplanes and also rockets using totally different technique. Like brain, we created computers. Today's computer programs play chess, find solutions for mathematical problems, offer expertise like experts in many fields such as cardiology and geology, and buy stocks in the stock markets.

Today's successful computer programs use thousands of inter-connected information. But, we need programs that can handle millions of inter-connected information to achieve human level commonsense. Instead of creating them directly, we may create programs that can learn and build the inter-connected information from the world experiences as children do. When we create a human like autonomous robot, it will also have self-awareness and some kind of emotions.

Achilles: How?

Tortoise: It depends on how we create it - its architecture and learning algorithms, and why we create it - its purpose (its goals). At a basic level, it has to know something about its energy source (say, battery). What is the maximum storage capacity? How much energy is needed for different kinds of work? What are the ways to get the energy? It has to know different parts of its body and how to use them. It has to know about the world and learn about its cause and effects. It has to know, what it knows and what it does not know. It has to know, its strengths and weaknesses. It has to know some knowledge about its own mental or emotional states - awareness.

It has to plan to pursue any goals. Real world goals are millions of times complex than the chess game. It has to choose a way or select a choice from many different things based on their risks and rewards, and positives and negatives while considering its own strengths and weaknesses. It is has to learn from its successes and failures. Learning and knowing its successes and failures would lead to mental states like happiness and frustration. New experiences bring surprises and confusions. In each and every stage, its mental states also expand to many complex levels.

Achilles: If we can create such robots, what stops us from making them far better than us!?

Tortoise: We can increase their brain size and speed by manifolds. Temporary or working memory size and self awareness capacity can be increased by manifolds to achieve far better performance and intelligence. Tomorrow, such robots may walk around us. They may find cure for cancer and HIV. They may find good solutions for poverty, economic issues and global warming. They may even create better robots than themselves. Who knows, instead of producing our next generations through our genes, we may directly take our brain to next generations!