by Erik T. Mueller
ISBN 0-89391-562-9, cloth
400 pages
Ablex/Intellect
This book presents a model of human daydreaming: spontaneously recalling or imagining personal or vicarious experiences in the past or future. It proposes daydreaming as a useful capability for any computer system and a necessary capability for a truly intelligent one. It argues that daydreaming (a) improves efficiency by exploiting free processing time learning from past experiences and preparing for future tasks, (b) improves creativity by generating fanciful scenarios and facilitating discovery of analogies among seemingly unrelated tasks, and (c) prevents emotions from getting out of hand. The book in turn argues that emotions are useful in computer systems for triggering and directing processing of multiple concerns given limited resources.
The book presents the Daydreamer computer program which implements these ideas. In response to input, Daydreamer produces English descriptions of its emotional states, rationalizations, associations, recalled past events, imagined variations of past events, and imagined future events. Daydreamer operates in the domain of interpersonal relations and common everyday occurrences such as jobs, dating, and entertainment.
Applications of this work include: control mechanisms for autonomous robots, improvement of efficiency of computer operating systems, tools for idea generation, creative conversational computer systems, and testing of psychological and psychiatric theories and treatments.
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