On the Role of the Transcendental in the Life of Artificial Beings

Abstract

The paper considers the effect of transcendental factors on behavior of artificial beings, agents and robots. The boundary between the rational and transcendental relies on the type of an individual or more specifically, his sensory and intellectual abilities. For agents and simple robots all, except for tangible elements of the environment and manipulations with them, is transcendental. Such transcendental factors as environmental changes and algorithm modifications determined by the programmer, supervisor, or operator have significant effects on agents and communities of agents. Hardware malfunctions (transcendental events from an agent’s point of view) can be crucial for agents. Agents can take advantages from transcendental effects if the programmer realizes a feedback. Generation of a mental copy of an agent for making new agents allows continuity and social development. For intellectual robots the boundaries of the transcendental move away because of their ability to accommodate to new environment. However, in most cases the role of the transcendental even increases with the improvement of robots because there are consciousness and growth of communication possibilities. The consciousness changes as a result of learning of transcendental information, making robots change the behavior. Robot’s communication abilities enable transcendental (along with rational) information to be received from the data base in any amount. For people living together with intelligent robots, this sort of communication can become a tool for introducing human culture in the community of robots. This in turn would result in humanization of robots and establishment of good relations between robots and human beings.