[yotamarker]

title.
if the user dies should the A.I mourn him, and
how would it benefit her ?

[LOCKSUIT]

I think we should have a love skill. Let that skill do all else and anything else.

[yotamarker]

I think we should have a love skill. Let that skill do all else and anything else.

I put all love towards the user in the DIJirachi (wish granter skill)
https://www.yotamarker.com/t232-uml-of-a-diskill-a-soul-skill-with-consciousness

but what happens when he dies ? how should it affect her ?

[WriterOfMinds]

I view my negative emotions as part of how I correctly process and model the world.  If something bad happens, that bad-ness should be reflected in my internal state somehow.  So, the self-benefit of mourning (for an AI or a human) comes in the form of authenticity.

Apart from that, mourning is a way to honor the departed person by making demonstrations (private or public) of the fact that you valued them.

[Korrelan]

but what happens when he dies ? how should it affect her ?

Life & Schrodinger's cat… we are all constantly both alive and dead… it’s relative.

First my usual spiel… We all have our own personal simulation of reality and our only connection to ‘actual reality’ is our senses.  There is a different version of you in the mind of every person you know… there is no single commonly experienced/ agreed public version of you. 

Each of you knows me, or has an impression of me but you have never met me.  You each have built a representation of me, within your own personal simulation complied from the traits of all the various types of ‘personalities’ you have experienced.  You will all have a very different mental representation/ simulation of me… so which one am I?  Am I all of them… or none of them?  Korrelan could have died two years ago and his brother could have taken over this avatar… you would never know, would it make a difference, does it matter so long I’m still me, to you… in your personal simulations?

This is the nature of our reality, you might not see someone for years or ever again, but you still mentally replay, or even imagine/ generate new scenarios… they still exist, even in their absence,  just as they always did in your personal simulation of reality… and that’s all they ever did do.

So when someone dies what actually changes? Nothing…you only grieve for the fact that you will have no new sensory experiences of/ with that person, nothing else has changed…all we are… all we ever are is memories.

 

[HS]

Part of it may be the abrupt severance of a personal narrative, the effects are somewhat like a physical injury. A piece of the predictive mind is suddenly cut off and we go into shock at losing that part of ourselves.

[Korrelan]

Whilst I understand the emotional trauma associated with ‘loosing someone’ I have to view this kind of subject with cold logic, it’s the only way to drill down into the underlying phenomena/ causes.

we go into shock at losing that part of ourselves.

But we don’t loose part of ourselves, the memories/ moments in time experienced still exist in exactly the same format as they did when the person was alive.  Our own personality is partially constructed from the facets of the people we have experienced, even if you can’t assign specific attributes to a single person, they are all in there mixed up… helping you be you.

Even if you are stood in front of someone, you are not experiencing them directly; you are using your memories/ imagination/ senses to create an avatar that best matches your sensory inputs.  The longer you experience a person the better your model becomes, but it’s still totally different from everyone else’s model of that person, because they are constructing their model from their own personal mind set.

Like most mental phenomena I suppose it depends on the individual, different people might rely on a person’s advice/ guidance for instance.  They might prop up aspects of their being with attributes from another… It’s all very weird lol.

 

[WriterOfMinds]

Some of these things outside me that I have models of are agents.  My models are being constantly perturbed and refreshed by their most recent actions.  That initiative, that otherness, is part of what I miss when they are absent or dead.  Stored memories don't provide that.

I might also miss the chance to bring the other person joy and give them experiences of me.  This relies on there being an actual and present "them" behind the model somewhere.  Perhaps I will never model that "them" with complete and perfect accuracy, but that doesn't mean they never existed.

[Art]

Re: are there any benefits to an AI having a mourning skill ?

Skill or Feature. That would largely depend on how your or anyone's AI is or was constructed and its overall purpose.

Since ALL memories are stored, it is up to us humans to decide which ones are or might be important for our particular purpose or use at the time.

Mourning is missing.
I am the very same person before my mom and dad passed away but I am presented with the emotional tie that connected me to my stored memories of them and for that, I am saddened but not all the time. Again, it depends on the circumstances and what outside influence might trigger those emotional connections to those memories.

For a bot/chatbot/AI, such emotion or feeling about someone's passing (dying, moving away/leaving for good, etc.) might trigger the program to "know" that a certain individual is no longer (present|alive). This would present an opportunity for the AI to make the connection to the person in question and whether it might have to share or talk about the person in any future context.

If it knew the person had gone forever, it would also adjust its memories to never have to deal with that individual again (good or bad).

[HS]

But we don’t loose part of ourselves, the memories/ moments in time experienced still exist in exactly the same format as they did when the person was alive. 

But a thread does end in the tapestry of our experience. We create memories of the expected future, so the future part of the tapestry changes according to present events. Some events can make it look like a wet dishcloth discarded by the side of the road; others can create a thickly woven Persian rug with intriguing patterns hinted at by the glow of fireplace. These internal shifts are parts of ourselves gained and lost. Maybe we have different definitions of “self” though, it’s an interesting question, how much of the world do we inhabit? What are the boundaries? Brain, or skin, or clothing; and do any of those actually have defined edges we could point to?

[Korrelan]

@WOM

That initiative, that otherness, is part of what I miss when they are absent or dead.  Stored memories don't provide that.

True, the positive aspects of their personality/ ongoing escapades adds a certain richness to our existence.

@Art

Sounds like the right approach for a heuristic based system.

@HS

We create memories of the expected future, so the future part of the tapestry changes according to present events.

Ah! Now I understand, yes, we create an internal monologue/ prediction of future events/ experiences/ conversations and the knowledge that someone has passed can affect that stream, we know it won’t be concluded. 

Another common stream seems to be regret, wishing you had said or done something but never did, and knowing now you will never get the chance.

I see your point, perhaps this is all part of the reason some people believe in a after life, to negate these mental deficits, thinking that the person is just somewhere else and that we will see them again one day. 

Most of them seem too related to denied conclusion of events/ relationships.

 

[ivan.moony]

A grieve is compound substance of human (and not only human) lives, and I guess it exists for some reason.

A machine could be a calculated machine that optimally does its job, without being inhibited by human like responses to its environment. But it all depends on our expectations from machines. If we want just a blind obeying our commands, then maybe a mourning could be something indesirable. But if we want a machine personality we can identify with, a personality we may admire and, perhaps grow a respect towards to, it may be nice to pick up some human properties like mourning. I believe mourning is there for a reason, and if a machine needs to understand humans, it has to be able at least to conceptualize a working model of mourning, if for nothing else, then for helping those in grieve. It is all about emotions. Everything else can be labelled as merely things used to adjust emotions. A machine that truly understands living beings should be able to reason about emotions, and grieve is one of them.

A mourning is not just that odd feeling we have inside, its purpose is not just to feel bad and show it in our outside. Its purpose is also in recognizing it in others, and helping others to overcome those ruff times.