INTENTIONAL SYSTEMS AND THE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI) HERMENEUTIC NETWORK: AGENCY AND INTENTIONALITY IN EXPRESSIVE COMPUTATIONAL SYSTEMS A Thesis Presented to The Academic Faculty by Jichen Zhu In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the School of Literature, Culture, and Communication Georgia Institute of Technology August 2009 INTENTIONAL SYSTEMS AND THE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI) HERMENEUTIC NETWORK: AGENCY AND INTENTIONALITY IN EXPRESSIVE COMPUTATIONAL SYSTEMS Approved by: Dr. D. Fox Harrell, Advisor Dr. Michael Mateas School of Literature, Culture, and Computer Science Department Communication University of California, Santa Cruz Georgia Institute of Technology Dr. Jay D. Bolter Dr. Nick Montfort School of Literature, Culture, and Program in Writing and Humanistic Communication Studies Georgia Institute of Technology Massachusetts Institute of Technology Dr. Kenneth J. Knoespel Date Approved: 05, July 2009 School of Literature, Culture, and Communication Georgia Institute of Technology ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am extremely fortunate to have the guidance and encouragement of my advisor, Fox Harrell. None of the work below would have been possible without his close attention and constant support, down to his offering painstaking comments. His vigor and open-mindedness have deeply influenced this dissertation and my approach to research. Iamalsogreatlygratefultomembersofmycommittee, JayBolter, KenKnoespel, Michael Mateas, and Nick Montfort. Michael and Ken were among the first ones who introduced to me the concept of “expressive AI” and works in science studies respectively, which have joined to orient the foundation of this dissertation. Jay and NickhaveprovidedmewithvaluablecommentsandadviceatthetimeswhenIneeded them the most. All of them have left firm stamps on this dissertation. Especially, I would like to thank the following individuals who have offered their discussions, comments, and proof-reading at the crucial stages of my dissertation: ¨ Kurt Belgum, Sooraj Bhat, Jill Coffin, Steve Hodges, Madhur Khandelwal, Ozge Samanci, and Geoff Thomas. Many thanks to Santi Ontan˜o´n, in particular, for shar- ing his computer science perspectives and for offering constant support throughout the entire process. Their support has made this dissertation significantly better. I have also benefited greatly from the weekly discussions with the current and past members of the Imagination, Computation, and Expression (ICE) Lab, especially Kenny Chow, Ben Medler, Donna Sammander, Tonguc Sezen, Digdem Sezen, and Daniel Upton. I am indebted to the diverse supportive communities in the Digital Media Pro- gram and Georgia Tech at large. I have benefited a great deal from my teachers, iii particularly, Carl DiSalvo, Charles Isbell, Janet Murray, Nancy Nersessian, Ashwin Ram, Mark Riedl, Eugene Thacker, Bruce Walker, and Lisa Yaszek. I have learned as much from my fellow collegues. At the risk of leaving out many names, I would like to thank Calvin Ashmore, Steven Dow, Clara Fernandez, Riccardo Fusaroli, Sergio Goldenberg, Mike Helms, David Jimison, Hartmut Koenitz, Hyun-Jean Lee, Brian Schrank, and Brian Sherwell. I also appreciate the administrative and technical sup- port I received from Matthew Mcintyre, and Grantley Bailey and Melanie Richard, respectively. Many thanks to my friends here in Georgia Tech and also in Atlanta, many of whom have been mentioned above. Their company has provided balance to my life and made these five years some of the best years for me. I am equally grateful to my teachers, colleagues, and friends from Pittsburgh, Montreal, and Shanghai. Finally, I would like to thank my family particularly my mother for their uncon- ditional support. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii LIST OF TABLES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix LIST OF FIGURES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . x SUMMARY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xii I INTRODUCTION: INTENTIONAL SYSTEMS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1.1 The ELIZA Effect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 1.2 Intentional Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 1.3 Motivations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 1.4 A Brief Account of Memory, Reverie Machine . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 1.5 Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 II THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 2.1 Perspectives on Computing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 2.1.1 The Computer as a Stand-Alone Thinking Machine . . . . . 24 2.1.2 The Computer as a Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 2.1.3 The Computer as a Medium . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 2.1.4 Messages of Social Struggle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 2.1.5 Narcissus’ Mirror . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 2.2 System Intentionality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 2.2.1 The Chinese Room Argument . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 2.2.2 The Intentional Stance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 2.2.3 The Ghost outside the Machine: Social Perspectives . . . . 42 2.3 Reading Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 2.3.1 Hermeneutics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 2.3.2 Software Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 2.3.3 Cognitive Semantics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 2.3.4 AI and HCI Analyses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 v 2.4 AI-based Interactive Narrative . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 2.4.1 Expressive AI Practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 2.4.2 Computational Narrative . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 III THE AI HERMENEUTIC NETWORK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 3.1 Intentional Systems as Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 3.1.1 What is Text? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 3.1.2 A Hermeneutic Framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 3.2 Constructing the Discursive Machine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85 3.2.1 Lessons from Alife: Discursive Strategies . . . . . . . . . . . 87 3.2.2 The “Epidemic” of Intentional Vocabulary . . . . . . . . . . 90 3.2.3 The Code Level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 3.2.4 The Presentation Level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 3.2.5 Constructing the Literature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 3.2.6 User’s Hermeneutic Reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 3.3 A Network Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104 IV THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS: A CLOSE READING OF THE COPY- CAT SYSTEM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 4.1 Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 4.1.1 Principles of Hermeneutics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 4.1.2 An Integrated Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110 4.2 The Corpus and Potential Limitations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113 4.3 The Technical-Social-Cultural Context of Copycat . . . . . . . . . . 114 4.4 Content Analysis of the Technical Literature . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 4.4.1 The Two Aspects of Copycat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 4.4.2 Intentional Vocabulary: Connecting the Two Languages . . 124 4.4.3 Leveraging the Two Languages of AI . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133 4.5 Ideological Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137 V AGENCY PLAY AS A SCALE OF INTENTIONALITY . . . . . . . . . 140 vi 5.1 Scale of Intentionality and System Agency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 5.1.1 Scale of Intentionality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 5.1.2 System Agency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144 5.1.3 System Agency in Interactive Narratives . . . . . . . . . . . 147 5.2 A Situated Approach to Agency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149 5.2.1 A Dance of Agency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150 5.2.2 Agency as Free Will . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151 5.2.3 Agency as Resistance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 5.2.4 Absence of Agency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 5.3 Agency Play as an Expressive Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154 5.3.1 Agency Play . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155 5.3.2 Agency Relationship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157 5.3.3 Agency Scope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159 5.3.4 Agency Dynamics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159 5.3.5 User Input Direction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160 VI MEMORY, REVERIE MACHINE: A CASE STUDY . . . . . . . . . . . 162 6.1 Motivation and Historical Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164 6.1.1 Machine Memories, Reveries and Daydreams . . . . . . . . 166 6.1.2 Stream of Consciousness Literature and AI . . . . . . . . . 167 6.1.3 Stream of Consciousness Literature and Cognitive Linguistics 170 6.1.4 Challenges of Engaging Legacy Forms . . . . . . . . . . . . 171 6.1.5 Related Works . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172 6.2 Deployment of “Scale of Intentionality” and “Agency Play” . . . . 180 6.2.1 Main Indicators of System Intentionality . . . . . . . . . . . 180 6.2.2 Examples of Various Levels of System Intentionality . . . . 182 6.3 Major Components . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187 6.3.1 Dynamic Narration of Affect Using the Alloy Conceptual Blending Algorithm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189 6.3.2 The Emotional State Machine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190 vii 6.3.3 Memory Structuring and Retrieval . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191 VII CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193 7.1 Revisiting the Major Arguments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194 7.1.1 The Formation of System Intentionality . . . . . . . . . . . 194 7.1.2 Design Implications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196 7.2 Contributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197 7.3 Future Directions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200 APPENDIX A SAMPLE DATA FROM THE TECHNICAL LITERATURE ON COPYCAT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203 REFERENCES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216 viii LIST OF TABLES 1 Framework of Intentional Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 2 Multiple Readings of ELIZA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 3 AI Approach for Analyzing Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 4 HCI Principles of Usability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 5 Comparison between the AI and HCI Analyses . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 6 Timeline of Major AI Developments between 1980 and 1999 . . . . . 116 7 Usage of Intentional Vocabulary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127 8 Usage of Cognitive Faculties in Naming Functions and Structures . . 128 9 Comparison of Copycat with humans and other forms of life . . . . . 129 10 Indicators of “Scale of Intentionality” in MRM . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182 11 Use of Intentional Vocabulary from paper “The Copycat Project: A Model of Mental Fluidity and Analogy-making.” . . . . . . . . . . . . 203 ix LIST OF FIGURES 1 George Lewis and His Voyager System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 2 Original Transcript of ELIZA (Excerpt) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 3 An Early Model of Tamagotchi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 4 Four Characteristics of Intentional Systems (Prototype Model) . . . . 7 5 Screenshot of AARON’s Output . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 6 Screenshot of a Simulation of Braitenberg Vehicles . . . . . . . . . . . 10 7 Original Transcript of SHRDLU (Excerpt) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 8 The Main Fragment of the Antikythera Mechanism . . . . . . . . . . 24 9 Screenshots of Heider and Simmel’s 1944 Film Experiments . . . . . . 37 10 Roomba Vacuum Cleaner with “Spotty Leopard” Costume . . . . . . 41 11 Mechanical Turkish Chess Player by Baron Wolfgang von Kempelen in 1769 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 12 CD Cover Art of Cope’s 1997 Album Classical Music Composed by Computer: Experiments in Musical Intelligence . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 13 The AI Hermeneutic Network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 14 Sample code of ELIZA from Norvig’s Textbook Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96 15 System Diagram of an Artificial Neural Network . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 16 A Partial Screenshot of the A.L.I.C.E Artificial Intelligence Founda- tion’s Website . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 17 A Network Model of the AI Hermeneutic Network . . . . . . . . . . . 105 18 Screenshot of a Java Re-implementation of Copycat by Scott Bolland 114 19 A Comparison between the Intentional and Technical Descriptions of Copycat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 20 Source Code for a Bottom-up Scout Codelet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130 21 Source Code for One Kind of “Happiness” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133 22 Occurrences of Intentional Vocabulary in “The Copycat Project: A Model of Mental Fluidity and Analogy-making” . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 x