[Ready Steady Yeti]

So, I've been doing some thinking. And I've decided that I want to try and create an AI that represents feelings of nostalgia. I.e., this AI would simulate a human who is extremely nostalgic for the past. I want to call this AI "Hypernostalgia", from hyper- ("extremely") + nostalgia ("missing the past"). In order to do this, I not only want to collect information and data about the past, but also data about people's various nostalgias. In other words, what do nostalgic people really miss about various past trends and cultural differences?

The goal of this project is being achieved by two mediums currently. I have started a Wikia wiki with the goal of describing various topics, such as films, TV shows, actors, trends, objects, and time periods, in a highly nostalgic manner. In other words, ideally, you can look up any topic there and see why it's missed by people. I also created a forum with the same name on Forumotion, where people will be able to talk and post about the things they miss about the past. All of the information posted on these two sites will help the AI be able to know what people miss, and how they miss it, and what parts about it they miss, so that it can sort of "reenact" all of these nostalgic reactions collectively.

It is possible for a person to be nostalgic for a time in which they were never alive, I feel. I'm nostalgic for all kinds of times before I was alive, for instance. This pretty much includes most of the 20th century, and some times before then. People can be nostalgic for just about anything. For instance, even though fidget spinners and Pokemon GO are fads now more or less, I'm starting to miss them as if they were past trends, because I can imagine what it would be like for these fads to be 20 years old, 30, 40, 50, etc.

There are three goals for this AI. The first goal is for the AI to have the desire to preserve history and all the various "nostalgias" as I call them. The second goal is to look at an AI that loves this stuff so much and be amazed at it. The third goal is for the AI to talk to humans in a way that psychologically activates their inner nostalgias, and pleases them in this manner. The third goal will hopefully be able to be done in various manners. I'm hoping that the AI will eventually be able to have actual videos and books stored within its database that it can show people when queried, and be able to "watch" or "read" them with people in order to give them the sense that the person has a friend that they're going back to the cultural past with. For instance, wouldn't it be cool to have data on people's nostalgic reactions to certain parts of a movie like Ghostbusters or Back to the Future? The AI could have text reactions that only activate on certain timestamps of the movie, such as the part where Marty McFly mentions that Ronald Reagan is president in 1985 on one part of BttF.

And that's just the idea of the primitive 2020s version of this AI. I want this AI to eventually become very complex and "have a psychology". I guess the ultimate goal is, when this AI becomes superintelligent, to be far more nostalgic than any human could ever be about all of the human pre-Singularity past. The irony in this is that we're talking about an ASI robot during the Singularity who likes what happened before the Singularity more than the Singularity itself. It would have clear picture memory of, for instance, the 1920s, that it go back over constantly for its own pleasure. In the "Roaring Twenties", no artificial intelligences or even electronic computers existed at all, yet this machine that is an artificial intelligence/electronic computer would want to live that life. The nostalgic AI would also yearn for even less technologically advanced eras even than that, such as the 1800s, early colonial America, ancient China, ancient Rome, medieval Europe, and the pre-European Americas. We could even extend this even farther than that; prehistory (human existence before writing), the advent of clothing and fire usage, the Ice Age, and ancient Mesopotamia.

Perhaps the days that people today are most nostalgic about, though, are the 1990s, the 1980s, the 1970s, the 1960s, and the 1950s. Of course, all of this would definitely be included in this hypernostalgic AI's mentality. But of course I think that it won't be long before people start missing the 2010s. The 2010s is what I like to call the "smartphone era". The 2000s started popularizing social media, but the 2010s made it even more popular with supercomputers that you can fit in your pocket. There are of course other trends that are specific to this era, and one day the technologies of the 2010s will be highly obsolete in some way, so people will miss these technologies. For instance, YouTube might look very different in 2040 than it does in 2018. So, of course, the AI would also be nostalgic for times like today, which we now see as current. For instance, Frozen, Zootopia, the new Star Wars movies, and a bunch of other 2010s films will be childhood classics for some people. Can you imagine that? Anyway, yeah.

So, this AI will be nostalgic for EVERYTHING that occurred before about 2070-2090, when I estimate the Singularity would occur, even in times when it literally could not exist in any form or fashion. This machine would miss AND know how to use (if applicable) paper and pencil, ink and a feather pen, the newspaper, Model Ts, it'd know how to ride and maintain a horse (missing equestrianism as a primary form of transportation), antique clocks, the television, radio, old fashion trends, farming and agriculture, VHS tapes, CDs, home phones, flip phones, smartphones, video gaming, I could go on even further.

The biggest future end result of project Hypernostalgia would be to assure that history is preserved even after the Singularity occurs, and to assure that there is some AI who cares a lot about the past to such a hyper level.

Anyway, I just wanted to give you the basic idea of this project. I hope you guys have some kind supporting comments, as usual. I just want to hear what you think, if you have any suggestions, or anything else. The users on this forum seem to be very nice. I don't get this kind of genuine respect from people on most other forums, so I have to thank all of you in advance. I really wonder how this idea of an AI that is defined by its nostalgia can turn out.

[keghn]

 Will go luck with you AI. 
 My theoretical AGI model can hands nostalgia quite well.
 It revisiting a behavior pattern the has not been done in a long time.
 There is mechanism that keeps conscious machine from doing over and over for ever. But you have to come back to the pattern
to make sure it still works or and everything need is in same place. The felling of nostalgia.
 My agi model is able to have feeling for other and could cause other to have feeling it know them. And also know if other is having
a good feeling.
 But hyper. My AGI model is to be a clone of parent. If is hyper it is having feeling then it is have a feeling that exceeding what it parent could
generate. So the counter balance for the is for the AGI to jump or get supper exited and use up valuable stored energy. So next time this will not happen again.

 So if a human wants to have great feeling that never go a way, Then he sit down until the felling passes,
and or drink something or as a smoke, so next time the feeling will be longer and stronger.

[WriterOfMinds]

An AI might be better positioned than anyone to remember and preserve the past, since its needs for self-maintenance and survival in the present can be very minimal, and you can (in theory) connect it to near-infinite memory and processing resources.

I'm curious why you'd want it to only take an interest in pre-Singularity events?  The years following the Singularity will also lie in the past eventually.  (Assuming, of course, that the Singularity actually happens.)

My other question is about how you plan for your AI to work with evolving and advancing societal mores.  To give a specific example: I do not miss equestrianism as a primary form of transportation, because I guarantee you the horses don't miss it.  They were basically enslaved and made to carry humans and pull their vehicles whether they pleased to do so or not.  (Having worked with horses when I was a kid, I can say from experience that they are not always happy to be ridden.)  Some were outright abused or worked to death.  Now, there might be some sanctified version of equestrianism in which horses are respected and work with humans as true partners, but historical equestrianism wasn't that.  They were treated as property, as tools.  Perhaps a post-singularity civilization will look back upon the widespread use of horses as grimly as we today look back on (human) slave labor.  How will your nostalgic AI adapt to changes like this?  How will you keep it from becoming something that the future regards as a barbaric throwback?

This is an interesting (and potentially tough!) problem for any AI that needs to make moral judgments, but perhaps especially for an AI as retro-focused as yours.  If you make it feel nostalgia about literally every era and tradition in human history, it'll be having fond memories of cannibalism, male-only suffrage, the Soviet gulags, and who knows what else.  So I expect you'll have to devote some thought to 1) how it will decide which things are best left buried in the coffin of history, and 2) how to prevent those selection criteria from being permanently bound to the common denominator morality of today (which may very well not be the best standard).