Instinctive computing

Abstract

Instinctive computing is a computational simulation of biological and cognitive instincts. It is a meta-program of life, just like universal gravity in nature. It profoundly influences how we look, feel, think, and act. If we want a computer to be genuinely intelligent and to interact naturally with us, we must give computers the ability to recognize, understand, even to have primitive instincts. In this paper, we will review the recent work in this area, the building blocks for the instinctive operating system, and potential applications. The paper proposes a 'bottom-up' approach that is focused on human basic instincts: forage, vigilance, reproduction, intuition and learning. They are the machine codes in human operating systems, where high-level programs, such as social functions can override the low-level instinct. However, instinctive computing has been always a default operation. Instinctive computing is the foundation of Ambient Intelligence as well as Empathic Computing. It is an essential part of Human Computing. © 2007 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.