Mens Latina Programming Journal -- 2019-04-20

[menti...@gmail.com]

Three days ago on impulse we began coding a Latin AI Mind in JavaScript for MSIE. We used JavaScript for the sake of what culture snobs call "accessability". In art or in culture, if a work is "accessable", it means that even hoi polloi can appreciate it. We classicists of ancient Greek and Latin are extremely snobby, exceeded in this regard perhaps only by the Egyptologists and by those who know Sanskrit. In fact, our local university newspaper had an article a few weeks ago claiming that there are five million modern speakers of Sanskrit and only nine individual speakers worldwide who speak Latin as a second language. Immediately I took offense because they obviously did not include memetipsum among the precious nine speakers of Latin. On the Internet I tried to hunt down the source of this allegation, this lese-majestation, this Chushingura-worthy objurgation that only nine Earthlings speak Latin. The insult and the non-inclusion festered in my Latin-speaking mind so much that I decided three days ago to show them that not only are there more than nine Latin-speakers, but that even imbecile Windoze machines can speak and think in Latin. And once I launched the Latin AI project, I discovered that the fun and excitement of it all grew on me and sucked me in stronger and stronger -- citius, altius, fortius. Sure, it's just a hobby, but it's better than fiddling while Notre Dame burns.

For my first release of the Mens Latina three nights ago, I simply did a mutatis mutandis of changing the interface of my previous AI from English into Latin, and I changed the links at the top from English links into Latin links. Then I ran it up the Internet flagpole to see if anybody would salute it, but nobody did.

For my second release I actually inserted some Latin concepts into the MindBoot sequence, but I had a terrible time trying to figure out a new name for the English word "MindBoot". At first I was going to call it the OmniScium as if it knew everything, but then I settled on PraeScium as the sequence of innate prior knowledge that gets the AI up and running. I did some more mutatis of the mutandis by changing the names of the main thinking modules from English into Latin. But when I ran the AI, it reduplicated the final word of its only innate idea and it said "EGO SUM PERSONA PERSONA". Today for a third release we need to troubleshoot the problem.

For the third release we have added one more innate idea, "TU ES HOMO" for "You are a human being." We put some temporary activation on the pronoun "TU" so that the Latin AI would find the activated idea and speak it. Unfortunately, the AI says "TU ES HOMO HOMO". Something is still causing reduplication.

Into the "PraeScium" MindBoot section we added the words "QUID" for "what" and "EST" for "is", so that the SpreadAct module could ask a question about any new, unknown word. We mutandied the necessaery mutatis in SpreadAct and we began to see some actual thinking in Latin, some conversation between Robo Sapiens and Homo Sapiens. We entered the word "terra" and the AI said, "QUID EST TERRA". We answered "TERRA EST RES" and the AI asked us, "QUID EST RES". It is now possible to ask the AI "quid sum ego" but, to quote Vergil, responsa non dabantur fida satis.

Mentis versio Abra003A in die Sat Apr 20 08:26:34 PDT 2019
Robo Sapiens: TU ES HOMO HOMO
Homo Sapiens: terra

Robo Sapiens: QUID EST TERRA
Homo Sapiens: terra est res

Robo Sapiens: QUID EST RES
Homo Sapiens:

Robo Sapiens:
Homo Sapiens: quid sum ego

Robo Sapiens: TU ES HOMO HOMO ES HOMO HOMO
Homo Sapiens:

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http://ai.neocities.org/Abracadabra.html