A computer program with emotions? |
| Once in a week or so very strange things happen with my PC. Late in the evening before I go home, it's my habit to start a simple cards game for 4 players called Spades (maybe you know it?) [1] named after the color spades, the trump in the game. The essence of the game is to predict correctly the number of tricks you're going to take after a look on your hand. I found Spades a couple of years ago in a CD collection of demos; in the meantime I have some experience with the strategies of my opponents. |
| The highest score can be reached by predicting correctly that you are not going to take any trick at all - a goal difficult to accomplish, since you have 13 cards on your hand. In such a situation, the strategy of the opponents is a twofold: (1) They have to bring home the number of tricks they announced. (2) They must try to make me fail by leaving just a single trick for me. To achieve this, no opponent plays the trump spade, unless he has no other color left. |
| Sometimes (about once in a week) it may happen that, while I'm playing a zero game, one of the opponents finds another color in his hand, although he did play spades before, just to make me fail. Evidently, he is cheating! But just before he does so, something extraordinary happens: The program freezes, and colored lines appear on the screen, slowly moving downwards for one minute or two. Thereafter, the game continues with my penalty trick. |
| I interpret this transient arrest and appearance of erroneous activity as embarrassment of the program, a clear indication for emotional behavior. |
| [1] Spades, by Spaceways Software, Austin, Texas, copyright 1993, demo version |
| 7/00 < MB 7/00 > 7/00 On the border between fiction and reality |