Book recommendation: Vehicles: Experiments in Synthetic Psychology

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This book was recommended by one of my coworkers. It was something he read a while back when studying electronics and robotics several years back. After looking at the book, I have to say, I think this could be something a lot of folks might be interested in here.

Here is the description for the lazy...  :)

These imaginative thought experiments are the inventions of one of the world's eminent brain researchers. They are "vehicles," a series of hypothetical, self-operating machines that exhibit increasingly intricate if not always successful or civilized "behavior." Each of the vehicles in the series incorporates the essential features of all the earlier models and along the way they come to embody aggression, love, logic, manifestations of foresight, concept formation, creative thinking, personality, and free will. In a section of extensive biological notes, Braitenberg locates many elements of his fantasy in current brain research.

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Braitenberg! There’s a

Braitenberg! There’s a familiar name =)

I was doing a little AI simulation some time ago, and I built a few of the Braitenberg vehicles in the sim environment for fun - quite interesting to play around with.

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I read it. I also think it

I read it. I also think it is a worthwhile book to read. I think he makes a good argument for considering synthesis (in addition to analysis) when doing research in artificial general intelligence (or even neuroscience).