For a robot to have a dream, its AI mind software must shut down the
input sensorium of strong sensations coming in from the outside world
or from a virtual world. In humans, the same process is known as
falling asleep. Then the AI software must permit minor "brainstorms"
of free associations in the mind of the sleeping robot.
If a kind of self-sustaining "weather-pattern" of internal association
develops, the activity reestablishes a non-waking consciousness in the
mind of the sleeper.
Because the robot dream is happening after all inside a computer,
all robot dreams may be monitored as images and sounds in a kind of
theater of the unconsciousness for analysis or even for reentry by
the robot into one of its former dreams. In other words, robots may
have a much more active dream life than humans do, with such robot
options as re-experiencing dreams or even of sharing dreams in the
same dream state with other robots. However, such co-dreaming by
robots would be a human programmer's nightmare, because the
associative vortex in one robot mind would have to be coordinated
with an identical or at least similar associative vortex in another
robot mind. It may even be necessary for a master-slave relationship
to be agreed upon before two robots can share a mutual dream,
so that the shared consciousness will flow freely under the
associative direction of one unitary mind at a time.
Of course, two robots could take turns in directing the stream of
consciousness central to the experience of the dream, with a more
experienced robot digging up a greater variety of old memories
and transferring the memories as shared mutual dream content to
a perhaps younger, less experienced robot. However, there could
not be too great a gap in the levels of experience between the two
robots sharing a dream, or the junior robot may not have the conceptual
and epistemological wherewithal to absorb the conceptual constructs
being transferred from the more advanced mind to the neophyte mind.
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http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Agora/7256/dreams.html : AI Dreams
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