Daydreamer may be AI's best kept secret. Daydreamer is thought provoking and fun! Daydreamer is a complete simulation of a human mind that thinks and acts in a virtual world. Unlike many other AI programs, Daydreamer is flexible. Just give it some goals and some input events, and it will be off and running in a stream of thought and action, which are monologuized in English.

Daydreamer does many things. Some of the most interesting are: Daydreamer reflects on its past experiences. If Daydreamer is upset about something, it thinks about something happy. Or, it may produce a rationalization. Daydreamer makes plans, forms intentions, and later acts on them. Daydreamer discovers creative solutions serendipitously, in response to internal or external triggers.

Technically, Daydreamer is composed of the following components: emotion-driven control loop, personal goals and metagoals, analogical planner, hierarchical planner, episodic memory, and English generator.

Here's a challenge to all you clever AI programmers out there: help Daydreamer do more! Here's how:

• Download Daydreamer
• Run the sample experiences and daydreams. Just type (load "dd").
• Delve into the tutorial on GATE, the underlying AI tools package.
• Extend Daydreamer with your own planning rules, inference rules, action effect rules, concern initiation rules, personal goals, emotional responses, generation templates, initial facts, input phrases, and episodes. (See the "tutorial" section.)

Try it!

http://www.signiform.com/erik/programs/daydreamer/

Daydreaming in Humans and Machines by Erik T. Mueller. Essential reading for anyone who wants to understand, use, or extend Daydreamer.

You can also download a scanned PDF file of an earlier version of this book.