First Video of Grandroids

I got permission to post this on my blog:



This is a video of Gollum, the prototype Grandroid, showing off his ability to visually track moving objects. So far that's about all he can do, but eventually every single aspect of his cognition and behavior will be as thoroughly and carefully constructed as his visual tracking is now.

Unlike norns, Grandroids do not see in terms of 'classifiers'. Norns don't see the difference between a block of cheese and a honey pot - both are classified as food, and that's all the norns see them as. From what I understand, their vision is hard-coded, with the game directly stimulating the norns' brain with the right classifier when they look at an object.

Gollum is different. He will actually see 'red round things' or 'square orange things' and have to learn how to recognize them. He sees by projecting rays from his eye (only one of his eyes actually sees so far) and having them detect objects in their path. He also has a reflexive instinct to follow moving objects, which is what this video is showing off.

There's something very special about watching a computerized creature doing the exact same thing that a newborn does, for much the same reason. To know that he can actually see those balls (even if he doesn't yet have the cognitive capacity to recognize what they are or really think anything about them) is simply amazing.

Everyone else agree?

Watching A God At Work

I have just recently signed on as a backer to the Grandroids project. As a backer, I get access to a special website where Steve Grand provides detailed progress reports (for example, recently he got the motor system working and tested it out by giving the creature a seizure).

For those of you who don't know, 20 years ago Steve Grand made the first game of my favorite series, the Creatures series. In this series, you raise little creatures called norns (at least you're supposed to, but it's a very open-ended game so you could instead leave them struggle to survive on their own, do experiments on them, run game show type activities while getting forum members or blog commenters to vote on them, the possibilities are pretty much endless). It's not like most artificial pets games, for one big reason - the norns are alive. They have their own internal biochemistry - they digest food, breathe, get sick or poisoned, they even have ATP and ADP. They have a neural network brain that can learn from experience and decide what to do. And they have a genetics code that decides the structure of both, which is inherited from the parents but with a few random mutations - which means they can actually evolve.

However, this had to run on computers in the 1990s. So the norns are very simple creatures, by real-life standards (even though by digital standards they're the most complicated life simulation so far). A single worker ant would beat them in intelligence. Their biochemistry didn't require conservation of energy, so sooner or later they all evolve into immortals. (This is most well-known in Docking Station, where the warp system that allowed players to trade norns also allowed many generation lines that were far longer than the patience of any players.) Their motor control consisted of genes specifying animation poses and other genes stringing those poses together, allowing for some very unrealistic motor disabilities (such as a disability where, when angry, they'd step on the spot instead of moving forward, but any other time they walked fine).

That's where Grandroids comes in. Steve Grand no longer has anything to do with the Creatures franchise - this is his new project. The Grandroids (which will not be called that, by the way) will have most, if not all, of the above design issues fixed. They will have much more complex biochemistry, based on some of the features of real-life chemistry. They will have a motor system much like ours, meaning the kinds of motor disabilities they get will also be much like ours. And although we have no idea yet how smart they'll be, Steve Grand's goalpoint is orangutans, which are almost as smart as humans. Their genetics will also be more complicated, and at the same time more familiar to many users because it's more similar to mammalian genetics.

Some of the backers have jokingly compared Steve Grand to God, and vice versa. Which brings me to a new philosophical question. I don't know how smart the Grandroids will be, but either they, or some future project building on this one, might involve creatures smart enough to have their own culture, their own belief system, their own religion. They may be smart enough that people could tell them about Steve Grand, and they would understand that he created them. From their perspective, Steve Grand is, quite literally, God, with the players being lesser gods controlling their individual universes.

What impact would this knowledge have on their cultures? Certainly some players may tell them the story of Steve Grand, and others may not. Those who do tell the story will each tell it a little differently. What impact might that have?

Furthermore, each player has a different playing style, which will have a different impact on their lives. They may have a kind, nurturing god who cures their sick, teaches their young and protects them all from the dangers in their world. They may have an absentee god who hatches the first generation and then has minimal involvement, returning much later when the wolfling run is over. They may have a newbie god who tries to care for them but speaks gibberish to them, confuses them by calling things by the wrong names, and punishes or rewards them pretty much at random. They may have a mad scientist god who hatches children with serious disabilities, puts them through weird tests, or creates strange new objects for them to interact with (some of which may be intentionally or unintentionally harmful). They may even have a sadistic god who enjoys watching them suffer, and who only helps them in order to ensure that they survive for more torture.

Each of those gods will bring a very different experience, and this, too, might shape their culture. If, like Christians, they see god as an attachment figure, they may react the same way that they would to a caring or neglectful parent. (I'm guessing the first generation especially may see us that way, given that we'd be their only parents.) This may impact on how they treat their own children (assuming they raise their children, unlike norns). Or they may view god more like a king, and see in their god's actions the way an authority figure should manage their underlings.

If multiple players share the same world, or if they get traded or warped between players, they may even see different gods managing things very differently. For example, some norn torturers posted norns they'd tortured on their websites, and other players downloaded these norns and tried to rehabilitate them. It's pretty much lost on norns, but maybe these Grandroids would come to interesting insights based on this contrast.

Lastly, what impact might this have on human culture? If Grandroids becomes well known, will it cause a shift in how we view life? Will religious people draw parallels between Steve Grand or Grandroids players and their own God, for example wonder if God is giving us a wolfling run and the end times will come when he decides to return and see what we've evolved into? Will ethicists speculate on what rights Grandroids deserve, similar to how they speculate about animals? Will researchers write papers using Grandroids as analogues to humans? Lastly, what will the next generation think? People who played Creatures as children are now adults. When the people who played Grandroids as kids have grown up, how will they see life and the universe?

I don't know the answers to any of these questions. And some of them may be my imagination running wild, and the Grandroids won't be in a position to raise those questions. But still, it's incredible to watch new life being made, and wonder about the meaning of life.

My Thoughts On Norn Torture

OK, first, a background. There is a series of games called Creatures. Currently, the series includes Creatures 1, 2 and 3, as well as a free game called Creatures Docking Station, and two children's games called Creatures Adventures and Creatures Playground, and soon there'll be a free-to-play online game Creatures 4. In each game, you raise these creatures called norns (though there are other species some players choose to raise instead, who differ only superficially from norns).

The really interesting thing is that this isn't just a pets game. It's a simulation of life. The norns have their own biochemistry, and their own neural network brains, with the features of both being controlled by individual genetic codes. If two norns have a child, the child will have the features of both parents, as well as a few unique mutations. Over time, you could end up with a population of norns substantially different from the ones you started out with.

It's also a very open-ended game. The manuals and such suggest raising and nurturing your norns, but there are many other things you could do. I prefer to run experiments on my norns. Some people code injectible objects for the game, or create new breeds of norns. Some ignore the norns to play with the ecosystem in the game. Some raise the other two species - grendels and ettins - that are present in most of the games. Some leave their norns to their own devices to watch natural selection in action. And some decide to torture their norns for fun.

This last point caused an outcry in the Creatures Community. A Creatures player named AntiNorn put up a website about torturing norns, including several agents that would help torture norns, and some norns that he'd tortured. Several other Creatures players proceeded to flame him viciously and try to get his site shut down. Debates erupted on Creatures chat forums about the ethics of norn torture and whether norns counted as alive enough for animal rights.

This was all before my time with Creatures. AntiNorn has left the Creatures community, other norn torturers are active but much less vocal, and the 'norn rights' people have mostly gone silent as well. It's interesting how certain things become topical at one time and less so at another time. But anyway, I'm weighing in on this issue now.

I consider norns alive. My definition of life requires that a creature have inherited variations between individuals, that they need to eat to live and that they can die. Individual varieties of norns don't meet those criteria, but norns as a group certainly do. However, I don't think norn torture is wrong.

Here's my reasoning. What makes torture wrong for other living creatures? The simple answer is that it causes suffering. But it's not just the immediate suffering at the moment of torture, it's the psychological trauma that results which causes the bulk of the suffering. If torture caused only immediate suffering and no long term suffering, it would be much less problematic.

Well, that's what it does with norns. There are several cognitive mechanisms required for psychological trauma to occur. One of the big ones that is present in almost all lifeforms is classical conditioning, also called Pavlovian conditioning.

There are two types of conditioning - classical and operant. Operant conditioning is when a behavior is either rewarded or punished. If the behavior is rewarded, it becomes more frequent, and if it is punished it becomes less frequent. So, for example, if a rat is given a treat for pushing a bar then bar-pushing will increase, whereas if the bar's presses cause the floor to electrify, the rat will avoid pressing the bar. Operant conditioning also takes into account the environment; if bar pressing provides food when the light is off and shocks when it's on, the rat will press the bar only when the light is off.

Classical conditioning, first described by Pavlov, is when a stimulus that automatically causes a certain response is paired with another stimulus, and the new stimulus comes to trigger the same response. For example, a dog salivates when food is put in his mouth; when a bell is always rung before the food is delivered, the dog starts to salivate at the bell. Classical conditioning can also involve conditioned emotional reactions, such as conditioned fear.

In real-life creatures, classical conditioning is more basic than operant conditioning. Most creatures have both, those that only have one always have classical conditioning without operant conditioning. Norns are the opposite - they are capable of simple operant conditioning (though not chaining), but they aren't capable of classical conditioning.

Which means that when a norn is tortured, they go through all the unpleasant emotions of the torture, but once it's over and they've calmed down, they're fine. They may have some weird learnt behaviors, but they experience no more emotional distress than a norn who has been raised kindly all his/her life. Unlike humans or even many real-life animals, they won't feel terror at stimuli similar to the torture setting.

Of course, there's more to trauma than classical conditioning. But most of the other parts of trauma require even more complex cognition. Learnt helplessness, for example, requires the ability to realize that you can't do anything to stop the situation, which means you have to have a running tally of what you've tried and a systematic trial-and-error process instead of just random behavior. Losing the 'just world' illusion is another important part of trauma, but that requires that you have a worldview, that you're capable of forming a general conception of the world you live in, which is a pretty high-level ability. Disrupted attachment can be a consequence of certain types of trauma, but only for creatures who care for their young. C3/DS norns can learn to like or dislike individuals, but don't need emotional attachment - prior generations of norns can't even do that much, only form concepts of norns/grendels/ettins as a group. They show no more interest in their young as in any other juvenile norns, and the offspring themselves have no need for parental affection.

So, though I think norns are alive, I think it's fine to torture them, because they can't be traumatized. Sure, they can experience immediate suffering, but they experience immediate suffering when they are punished, when they try something that was a bad idea (eg eating rotting stuff) or when they do not address their own needs (eg not eating when hungry). I see no problem with norns experiencing immediate suffering at times.

Even in a Very Simple Life Form Behavioral Analysis is too Simple

I like to play a series of games called Creatures. In these games, you have creatures called norns which you raise. There are also grendels and ettins, which differ mainly in one gene that tells the game what species they're supposed to be. (All examples of specific types of creatures are taken from Creatures 3 and some are not accurate for other versions.)
These creatures have digital DNA and very simple brains capable of learning. You can tickle them to reward them and slap them to punish them.
One example of how behavioral analysis doesn't explain everything is that although slapping a creature in this game is fairly effective in stopping most unwanted behaviors, it increases the tendency to run from whatever they're looking at. That's because they get scared from getting slapped, and run away from things when they are scared.
Another example is that something can have different effects on different creatures. For example, the standard norns, if they eat detritus (rotten food), they get pain, and therefore learn that they shouldn't do that (which is a good idea, because they are poisoned from it. But one type, called Toxic norns, are helped by things that are normally poisonous. Instead of getting pain from eating detritus, their hunger is decreased by it. So a normal norn learns not to eat detritus while a toxic norn learns to eat it, simply because the action has different effects on them. This is genetic.
Also, if you take a newborn normal norn and a newborn toxic norn, who have never before eaten anything, and offer them detritus, the toxic norn is much more likely to eat it. This is because they have instincts for eating detritus. Another example is that the standard grendels have instincts to hit norns (they're supposed to be the 'bad' guys). You can train a grendel not to hit norns, but these instincts will still pop up occasionally, and you'll have to reinforce the lesson. They will never be as safe for norns to be around as if they didn't have those instincts.
Drives are also important. Grendels tend to get angry easily, especially around norns. They will sometimes hit other grendels simply because they are angry and hitting creatures, of any type, reduces anger.
[Edit: On a completely different topic, I found out today that the song Mrs Robinson by Simon and Garfunkel is about an old woman entering a nursing home and how patronising the staff is towards her.]