oh jeeze... So much to read up on I see. But you know, how about if I were to go about it totally my own way? perhaps I'd develop a new kind of reasoning. well I plan to give it my reasoning skills anyway, so it'll be weird, and probably apply to all you mentioned.
Emotions are very easy to program in, as far as I foresee. Too easy. of course you need a lot of failsafes, because they'll influence everything.

Say Sweex, if you need some help in your basis, I might be able to give you a push in the right direction. I'm good at laying out basics. Just tell me what you're thinking of.
The only problem I have with letting other people at my AI, is that I haven't copyrighted it or anything, and I'm afraid it's going to be snitched, corrupted and used for military purposes. and since javascript code is very accessible... I don't think anyone will be testing out arckon for some time. uh, no offense.

progress today:
- Arckon now replies to simple answers in grammatically correct sentences, according to a default order of words. based on only word emphasis for now, it can choose to omit words like the subject or object, or use a reference word like "it" instead of "the computer".
- the only errors I get now are of parts I forgot to include in his word lists. I am currently programming in a new command that will have him check his word lists for the inclusiong of a specific word by himself. It does not yet draw conclusions. I'm coming to that.
- It has the ability to crossreference two "items", to guess for specific items: so, if I ask it: "is my creation your program?" it looks for which specific one of my creations is which specific one of his programs. If one equals the other, it knows what creation and what program we are talking about (multiples aren't included yet).

yes, as you can see, I am still mostly working on arckon's language interface. next is answering questions that start like "what is..", or "who has.." and such, and an interface for entering new words and drawing conlusions from statements the user makes. and with that, a capacity to store everything in a huge memory file.

Thanks Arckon for offering any help, but I'm having my mind (for a long time now) on a different project. Maybe when I've got loads of time I'll pick it up again (Being when my pension starts, 50 years or so!;-)...

I think I was thinking further than you are. I was (still am) very interested in a way of storing and linking all data that the avatar receives to form a reply.

Little example of what I wanted to end up with:
human : "Do you like dogs"
avatar: "Yes"
human : "Why?"
avatar: "Because they are fluffy and warm"

Sure, you can feed the avatar with the logic that a dog is likeable because it is fluffy and warm... But than that would be simply something YOU "taught" the avatar with. Imagine that a friend enters the keyboard and he does not like dogs. He asks the same thing

human : "Do you like dogs"
avatar: "yes"
human : "Dogs are not nice animals"

Now what does the avatar do? Keep it's first data which you taught 'em, or replace it with your friend's opinion of dogs?

See the problem? I wanted a system that takes facts and makes up his own opinion about ie. dogs. You can tell 'em properties of a dog, different races of dogs, different behaviours of dogs and the avatar would make it's own decision based on LOADS of things whether it likes dogs or not...

If you keep on thinking about this, you probably end up stuck with the question: "Are all things based on *facts* or *opinions*?"

...Basically I took the avatar idea way beyond text/grammar recognition and tried to find out a good basis for the "intelligence"...

Although I'm thinking the same about releasing my sources as you do, you can always ask yourself the question: "Is my idea such a great one that NO ONE has ever came up with it, or has nobody done it because it's a bad idea?"

Would still be cool though if you wrote it in a compileable programming language so you can release test versions without having to be afraid of it being "stolen"...

Anyway, keep up the good work!

well, I don't know about that last question. I don't hold my idea to be the greatest in the world or something. actually, I expect to be overtaken soon enough by people who have the research for it. like I said, I just want to do this for fun. not for my ego.

And excuse me, but why in the world IS it that there aren't AI lifeforms out there yet? hm? tell me that.

Not sure what you mean by "AI lifeforms", but I'll assume you mean "AI avatars" like yours? If so, then please realise there in fact *are* quite some. Perhaps not precisely like yours, but think of programs like eliza and it's (sort of) successor alice...?

Don't mean to put your work down or anything btw!

.Sweex.