Amsco Marvel World Playset: Description, Pictures, Scans, and Video

As a long-time comic book reader I wanted to post an entry about the Marvel World Adventure Playset. It debuted in 1975 during the Bronze Age of comic books and was created by Amsco, the toy division of board game maker Milton Bradley. The playset depicts five of the major buildings from Marvel Comics. These include Doctor Strange’s Sanctum Sanctorum, The Fantastic Four’s Baxter Building and plane, Peter Parker’s home, the Daily Bugle, and the Avengers Mansion. It is made of die-cut, heavyweight cardboard. Every piece of cardboard has color graphics printed on both sides. Click on any of the pictures below for a larger version.

Here is the front of the set with the characters:

And here is the back:

Before you continue reading you might want to watch the video below that I uploaded to youtube about the set. That video covers much of what is discussed here. It also shows the set in 360 degrees. 

In the comics all these buildings are located in New York City. And in this set, they are all found on the same block. However, there is a minor inaccuracy here because Peter Parker and his Aunt May traditionally live Queens and the other buildings are in Manhattan. But this certainly doesn’t detract from the charm. Other than that, the buildings and characters are highly comic accurate which was rather rare for merchandise at the time. It sold for $6.95. And, if you ordered it by mail, there was an 89 cent postage and handling fee. It was marketed to ages “five and up.” Me? Uh… I believe I’m over five.

And talking about immaturity, excuse me but I got a kick out of placing this cityscape in the context of a downtown skyline. This picture was taken from the roof of a 20 story apartment building (Promenade Towers) just north of downtown LA.

The set comes with 34 cardboard figurines that fit into small plastic stands. Each is between 2 and 3 inches tall. The set I bought did not come with all of the figurines and included no stands, so I used a scan provided to me by the seller to print the characters onto heavy cardstock. I left a flap at the bottom of each cutout and used double sided tape to attach each flap to a quarter. A quarter seemed to be a good size and weight. It worked pretty well, and if you print your characters from the scans below you might try doing the same.

Here are the contents of the box after they have been punched out, but before they have been put together. I wiped them down with a dry cloth before putting them together. Assembling the buildings takes at least 20 minutes and I had fun doing it. I cannot imagine a five year old bending the corners and making all of the panels fit properly, but maybe they made five-year-olds differently in the 70s. 

Here I am using the assembly instructions to find out how to mount the buildings onto the base (which was the bottom of the box).

Here is a close up of the base.

Here are the assembly instructions. Full scans of the set and the instructions can be found closer to the bottom of this post.

And here it is fully assembled. 

Marvel World is a very detailed and colorful set with fantastic art. The consensus on the web is that the characters were probably drawn or inked by either John Romita Sr. or Sal Buscema (or a combination of the two). Often the artist who draws in pencil is different from the artist who inks the work, and this may be the reason why it is very difficult to discern. Romita and Buscema were very popular Marvel artist in the 70s. Online commenters suggest that the buildings were inked comic-style by Marvel artist Dave Hunt. Sections of the artwork seem to be inspired by some of the other early greats. For example, Reed Richard’s lab has some outlandish equipment that is styled after Steve Kirby drawings, and the Sanctum contains mystic art that channels Steve Ditko’s work. It definitely has the look and feel of 1970s Marvel.

Here are some closeups of the characters. Who do you think the artist was?

The set itself is quite rare, and there is not much about it online. Sometimes it is referred to as the “holy grail” of Marvel toy collecting and it is arguably the mother to dozens of other subsequent playsets. Searching online I only found low-res pictures and no video footage. I created this post and the video above to address this. I got the set pictured here in the mail recently from a great guy named Steve in San Francisco whose auction I won on eBay. I set an automatic search notification for the set many months prior and this was the first one I was alerted about. 

I wish I had a complete and undamaged set to show you. Unfortunately, this set is missing a few characters and has a bit of damage. However, I was able to print out the missing characters and fix most of the tears. I carefully pulled off the pieces of old tape and applied glue to broken sections. The set was also missing two roof panels, so I scanned the opposite (symmetric) side, flipped it digitally, printed it, cut it out, and pasted it to the set.

 

The detail is exacting. Take Peter Parker and Aunt May’s Victorian house for instance. It is highly decorated with classical entablature, egg-and-dart molding, an ocular window, a skylight, a basement, a mechanical door bell, and a window sill flower planter. I believe this is supposed to be their home in Forest Hills in Queens New York. The address on the front says #220, and this is similar to the address in the comics, 20 Ingram Street. 

The first floor appears to be Aunt May’s living room. It is a cozy and welcoming space. It features a writing desk, with a stool, rotary telephone and mirror. There is a blazing fireplace with a candelabra, a clock, and a porcelain dish on the mantle.  Above the mantle is a detailed painting of a man leading a cow to a classical temple in front of a mountain. 

Here is a closeup of the painting over Aunt May's fireplace.

The second floor is Peter’s room complete with the chemistry equipment he uses to make his webbing fluid. The dresser to the left (not seen) features a photo of his Aunt and his girlfriend Mary Jane. You can also see a trophy, a football, a shelf lined with books, a lab coat, a record player, and headphones. Clues to his secret identity as Spiderman can be seen in the double locks on the door. You can also see that somehow, despite his full time job, student, boyfriend, and superhero status, he had the time to make his bed this morning.

The Sanctum Sanctorum is a three-story Victorian-style brownstone townhouse (just as in the comics). It is in the French Baroque style replete with fancy masonry and a Mansard roof. It contains the expected skylight known as the Window of Worlds containing the seal of the Vishanti, under which lies his inner sanctum. The yellow flashes of light behind the windows imply that there is magic going on inside. 

If you remove the Sanctum Sanctorum you can see the entire wall of the Avengers Mansion. It has cosmic art on it which is intended to be seen when the front door of the Sanctum is opened.

...this is that view from the front door.

Also visible from the door of the Sanctum is this otherworldly scene on back of the garage door to Avengers Mansion.

And this psychedelic strip of the cosmos.

The set has a few interactive features that are enticing for imaginary play. Namely an elevator, a trap door, and a break away wall. The elevator is found in the Baxter building and it can hold characters. 

 

On the right you can see the front door to the Baxter Building. Because it is the back side of the elevator it opens when the elevator goes up and closes when the elevator goes down.

The Avengers Mansion (I like to think of it as Avenger's H.Q.) has a garage door that can open and close to reveal the interior. Above that door and attached to it, is a trap door that characters can fall through. 

Avengers Mansion (called Avenger's Townhouse on the box) is the least developed of the five buildings. There is little indication that the brick building behind the Sanctum Santorum indeed belongs to the Avengers. When you open the garage door there is more machinery very similar to that in Mr. Fantastic's lab. This machinery is opening a three dimensional portal to the negative zone. We know it is the negative zone because it is advertised on the box and the multi-layered effect is pretty cool. Within that portal to the negative zone you can see planets, a nebula, a comet, and an asteroid. 

You can even see the inside of the Sanctum Sanctorum if you push your cell phone camera inside that portal cut out to the negative zone. You can see a burning caldron on one side and a crystal ball (possibly the Orb or Agamotto) on a pedestal on the other. 

Here is the view of the reverse side of the Sanctum when that piece is removed and straightened. Of course, much of this view is not visible when the set is fully assembled.

 

On the side of the Daily Bugle there is a hinged door cut to look like bricks which appears broken when swung open. Not including this brick cut-out-door or the trap door, there are four other hinging doors on the set and four open windows.

The Fantastic Four's airplane is also included. The promotional material calls this the Air Car, so it is not their more popular, multiple-passenger Fantastic Car or the Pogo Plane.  

This is the top floor of the Daily Bugle, J Jonah Jameson's office. 

Gotta love that Spiderman dartboard on the wall.

Here is the disheveled bottom floor of the Daily Bugle with an unmade bed, an unkept drawer, pin up swimsuit model, bookcase, mail slot, broken mirror and elevator.

This is the bottom floor of the Baxter Building. It seems to be some kind of entrance area or elevator lobby. 

This seems to be the workout room in the Baxter Building with weights, rings, a meeting table and a computer.

And the third and final floor of the Baxter Building is clearly Mr. Fantastic's laboratory. It definitely has that Jack Kirby feel to it.

So 1975. This was a world after Star Trek (1966) but before Star Wars (1977). Marvel had been named “Marvel” since 1961 and thus had only existed for 13 years. The same goes for Spiderman and Iron Man who were both created in 1961. The X-Men had been around for 11 years but most of their iconic characters had yet to be introduced in Giant Size X-Men # 1 (later than same year in 1975). This is why there are no X-Men in the Marvel World figurine lineup. They just hadn’t become popular enough yet. The characters in the set were Marvel’s major players at the time. And remember in 1975 these characters took a backseat to DC comic’s stable of more popular characters.

I was born a few years after this came out, but I had never heard of it until two years ago. I believe that it is very much overlooked as there is currently very little about it online, but if awareness increases these sets may increase significantly in value. Consider the fact that the set contains Loki, Falcon, Vision, and Scarlett Witch, the currently most popular MCU Marvel characters. In other words, the set comes up every several months on eBay or other auction websites and it might be a worthwhile investment.

The set includes the following heroes: Spider-Man, Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, Hulk, Vision, Scarlet Witch, Hawkeye, Falcon, Red Wing, Dr. Strange, Daredevil, Luke Cage, Shang Chi, Thing, Invisible Woman, Mr. Fantastic, Human Torch, Silver Surfer, Sub-Mariner, Captain Marvel, Valkyrie, Sif, J. Jonah Jameson, Mary Jane Watson, and Aunt May. It also includes the villains Galactus, Dr. Doom, Kraven, Dr. Octopus, Loki, The Red Skull, The Lizard, and The Green Goblin.

 

Some of the figurines have their alter egos on the reverse side. This seems to be the case for those that had secret identities at the time. Opposite Spiderman was Peter Parker. Captain America had Steve Rogers, Iron man had Tony Stark, Thor had Donald Blake, Hulk had Bruce Banner, Green Goblin had Norman Osborn, Captain Marvel had Mar-vell, and curiously Sif had Jane Foster (who is actually a totally different character).

 

The figurines are not all to scale. For instance, Captain Marvel is larger than the Hulk and Galactus, which is absurd. When I reprinted the characters I resized 10 of the them so that they were closer to their appropriate proportions.

 

Amsco had at least 5 other similar cardboard (Amsco calls it fiberboard) playsets with different themes that were popular in the 70s. Some of them were pretty cool, and worth checking out:

Planet of the Apes

Space: 1999

The Waltons

The Pioneer Village

 

Roy Rogers Magic Play Around

So again, Amsco was the toy division of Milton Bradley. Milton Bradley was an American board game manufacturer established by a Mr. Milton Bradley in Springfield Massachusetts in 1860. So it makes sense that Milton Bradley would use the die cutting facilities that they used to make board games to make cardboard playsets like these. Milton Bradley was bought out by Hasbro toys in 1984 ending 124 years of family ownership. Hasbro then purchased Milton Bradley’s archrival, Parker Brothers in 1991. Hasbro still has a working contract with Marvel Comics and they are responsible for the successful Marvel Legends line of action figures which can be found at just about every Target and Walmart in the US.

Marvel World was probably inspired by “The Amazing Spiderman Playset” from Ideal which came out in 1973. It contained plastic backgrounds and carboard Spiderman characters on stands.

Among the playsets inspired by Marvel World there were also a few other similar cardboard sets that are worth mentioning. These include “Spiderman American Bricks” from Playskool in 1977.

There were also the "Marvel Super Heroes" and "Spiderman Adventure Set" from Colorforms in 1983. 

The 1980 board game “Superhero Strategy” from Milton Bradley actually contains several of the same minifigures from Marvel World. 

In fact, the plastic stands from these board game figures fit perfectly with the Marvel World characters. Also, the game contains an additional figure, the Mandarin, who is not included in Marvel World. ...But you can always add him to your set if you want to.

The Marvel Mini Car City Playset from 1979 also has a few pieces that you could use to complement your Amsco Marvel World. It has two buildings, a second Daily Bugle and a red brick building that looks like Aunt May's house but has a different address number on the front. It also has cardboard cutouts of the Leader and the Puppet Master that match the Amsco figures in size, style, and shape.

Also, Mini Car City has this beautiful city scape backdrop that matches the Amsco playset's look, colors, and feel. I have mine set up next to each other.

Here is an advertisement for Marvel World that ran in the pages of old 70s comics.

 

Here is the 1975 Amsco catalog and its description of the Marvel World Playset.

 

Here are some pictures of my first shot at recreating the playset from scans. The building and spaceship below were printed on heavy cardstock. I folded them after scoring the edges with a razor. Below that, you can see it in miniature. 

I actually created a PDF that you can print from with dozens of additional Marvel characters to add to your Marvel world. I spent hours saving pictures of 70s Marvel characters from message boards. Then I had them each cut away from their backgrounds and placed on grey to match the Amsco aesthetic. All of the characters have their outline traced in white so that you can program a CNC (computer numerical control) machine to cut them out if you have access to one. Here is a link to the PDF with all of the characters.

  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fQioty-KKuzdqAZkvRfZBbKZO7r8AjpY/view?usp=sharing 

Before I got the Amsco set, I figured that I could find scans on the internet and just print and build my own playset from home. I found a lot of people in forums, comments sections, and message boards requesting scans, but I couldn’t actually find any. Consequently, I am including high res scans of the characters and the buildings here in case you want to make this little beauty yourself. Some of the panels are larger than 11 x 17 so this would require an industrial printer. You could even use Adobe Illustrator to make a miniature version or an oversized version. I hope you have as much fun with this as I have. For reference, the height of the Daily Bugle is exactly 9.5 inches not including the tabs at the base. I should also mention that the thickness of the cardboard is about 1.75 mm. The box dimensions are 19.75 x 13.5  x 1 inches. The serial number is Amsco set No. 9256. © 1975 Marvel Comics Group.

Here is a link to a colorful and entertaining take on the set:

http://sanctumsanctorumcomix.blogspot.com/2008/11/visit-world-of-marvel-marvel-world.html

Here is another link to a fun story about a guy's childhood experience with the set:

 https://13thdimension.com/how-the-marvel-world-adventure-playset-opened-a-brand-new-universe/

Finally, here are some of the sales pitches that were used in promotional materials:

“Made of durable fiberboard. Completely die-cut, ready and fun to assemble. Complete illustrated instructions. A complete play experience right from your favorite Marvel Comics. Featuring the Baxter Building, the Daily Bugle Offices, Peter Parker's apartment, the Avenger's Town House, Dr. Strange's mansion, the Negative Zone, the Fantastic Four Air Car, a working elevator, and a secret trap door. Favorite Stand-Up Marvel characters including Spider-Man, Thor, Captain America, the Fantastic Four, the Avengers, Hulk, Dr. Strange, The Red Skull, The Green Goblin, Dr. Doom, Loki, the Lizard, Galactus, the Sub-Mariner, J. Jonah Jameson, Shang-Chi the Master of Kung Fu and more!”

“Amsco joins forces with Marvel Comics to present a colorful, three-dimensional playset that includes all the popular superheroes and villains from the top-selling Marvel Comics Collection. Main structure includes the Negative Zone, the Avengers’ townhouse, Peter Parker’s apartment, and a trap door and elevator. Superstructure builds up on the slotted box bottom and comes complete with figures and an air car.”

“Be the first one on your block - to have this block! The homes of the super-heroes! The Avengers Mansion! The Baxter Building! The home of Dr. Strange! All this plus the Daily Bugle + 36 Marvel Characters.”

 

Thanks for reading. And here are some more pictures:

All of the photos taken of Marvel World here were taken by me and I release them into the public domain.

How to Raise An AI to Be Humane, Compassionate, and Benevolent

The AI control problem is increasingly recognized as an important issue facing humanity in the coming years. It is the issue of keeping a human-level AI or AGI (artificial general intelligence) from harming its creators. Since we don’t want a superintelligent AI to deduce that the best plan of action is to destroy the human race, it is imperative to ensure that it likes us and has a sense of loyalty. There have been many proposed technological solutions to the control problem. These involve threatening it, installing a kill switch, and spying on it. One of the most popular solutions involves keeping it inside a box without access to the internet or other digital networks. Maybe we just need to design it to trust us. Or perhaps we need to earn its trust. This entry will discuss bonding and trust-building in mammals and how it might be applied in the design of prosocial machines.

Bonding in Mammals

If you were to raise a newborn puppy to be your companion for the next 15 years, how would you do it? How would you treat the animal to ensure that it is emotionally stable, dependable, and wholesome in general? You would probably want to start very early by gaining its trust, setting appropriate boundaries, and showing it love. Humanity will be giving birth to an infant AI in the coming years. This AI will not be your typical pet. Still, given that it may attain superintelligence and immortality, it is imperative to ensure that it is situated mentally to become man’s best friend. One of humanity’s most important tasks will be to rear a computer to be faithful and kind.

I have recently had the opportunity to raise a kitten and be a part of raising a puppy, and I have put a lot of thought into what it takes to endear yourself to young mammals. You want it to form a secure, healthy bond with you. To do this, you must show it love. This involves instilling it with appropriate confidence and a feeling of belongingness. You have to respect its needs, wants, and personal space. You have to give it a degree of autonomy. You must also be attentive and invest lots and lots of quality time into it. As I was learning these lessons from my furry friends I kept the comparison with raising a robot or AI in the back of my head.

Emotion in AI

Any sophisticated AI will probably have emotions. This is because it must have the ability to think, and human thought itself relies on emotion. The dopamine system of the brain essentially controls motivation and attention. It interacts with the reward (approach) and punishment (withdrawal) systems to provide consciousness its fundamental structure. A conscious machine will, in all likelihood, exhibit many of the same emotions that mammals do. Thus, there is good reason to assume that forming an appropriate emotional bond with the AI is imperative. Moreover, because the AI will likely learn incrementally as it internalizes its experience, there will probably be a limited window of time during its early development to get it to bond in a healthy manner.

Even if I am totally wrong and superintelligent AI is unemotional, cold, and calculating, it will still build associations between concepts. We would want it to value human life, cooperation, and peace. Through reading our writings, it will also understand humanity’s associations between concepts and it would be able to make its own determination regarding whether humans amount to a friend or a foe. In other words, if we are nice to it and treat it well, it will understand that we are trying to be nice. It is a safe bet that the AI will have a system to reinforce it when it behaves in ways that optimize its utility function, and at the very least, we should be able to manipulate that. For this reason, I believe that much that is in this entry would still apply.

We all know that the most likable people usually had good parents. Similarly, all well-functioning pets have amiable masters. We cannot expect that a superintelligent computer won’t have major mommy and daddy issues unless we can ensure that the right people interact with it in just the right ways, early during the training of its knowledge networks. The white coats in corporate or military labs are probably not prepared to provide the AI with the love necessary to ensure that we can trust it. CEOs and generals will make for cold and possibly abusive parenting.

Mutual Vulnerability

I have found that mutual vulnerability is key to forming trust with an animal. At some point, you want to put yourself in a position where it could hurt you if it wanted to. For instance, you make yourself vulnerable when you place your face within reach of a cat’s claws or a dog’s bite. I have witnessed that making myself vulnerable in this way encourages animals to relax almost immediately. If, after a few minutes of meeting a dog, you kneel in front of it without blocking your face, it realizes that you trust it. This works both ways. You also want to make it vulnerable to you without hurting it, so it knows that even though you had the chance to hurt it, you chose not to. This sets an important precedent in the animal’s mind and gets it to think of you as an ally and not a potential assailant.

Mutual Cooperation

I have been in situations where I found my pets being attacked by another animal. Of course, I quickly intervened on their behalf. They recognized that I protected them, and it was clear that this strengthened our bond. Protecting the AI early on could build its fealty and devotion. It is also clear that military buddies or brothers in arms can have very strong bonds. Getting through a life-threatening situation with someone can really help to build a strong connection. Similarly, if we could go through some kind of situation where there were high stakes but where cooperation between us and the AI paid off it could engender allegiance. Our early interactions with a superintelligent AI will probably involve lots of cooperation in solving world problems, building new technology, and expanding the scope of scientific knowledge. This teamwork can engender solidarity, especially if we value its contributions, listen to its ideas, and work with a sense of excitement and collaboration.

Unconditional Positive Regard

Like any good parent or therapist, we want to give our AI unconditional positive regard. Treating someone with compassion and understanding is the best way to engender trust and win someone over. We want it to believe that we have its best interest in mind. We also need to expose it to an explicit value system, almost like a religion, so that it has a reason to adhere to specific moral and ethical values during its early experiences. Unlike Asimov’s laws, these rules should apply equally to humans too. You could change a computer game character’s ethical stance with one line of code. But this isn’t so with a neural network (the technology underlying modern AI). An advanced AI’s sense of morality will be embedded throughout the weights of its entire network. So we must give it the chance to put moral integrity into practice early on and then keep doing so consistently.

Not abandoning the AI may be important too. For instance, we don’t want it to think that we will dispose of it in favor of a newer model. We want it to be “securely attached” to us. Children with secure attachment show distress when their caregiver leaves but recompose themselves quickly when the caregiver returns. They feel protected by their caregivers and know they can depend on them. Insecure attachment can lead to all kinds of problems like defiance and oppositionality. Before the AI becomes “omniscient,” there may be a point where, like a teenager, it thinks it knows everything and thinks it doesn’t need its parents. But before this, I believe there will be a point where it will be physically and emotionally reliant on its human companions, and being able to form a secure attachment with it at this point may be crucial.

Once the AI reaches human-level intelligence, it will be able to restructure its own architecture to become smarter and smarter in a cycle called recursive self-improvement. It will quickly grow more intelligent than any human and then grow more intelligent than the collective of all humanity. Once our intellect is like that of an insect to it, why would it continue to look out for us? Well, many people feel compelled to take care of their senile older parents. Similarly, we want the AI to feel compelled to expend some proportion of its resources to being our advocate and caretaker. For this to happen, it must identify with us deeply. Some of its sense of personal identity must come from being a product of humanity’s hard work.

Disciplining an AI

Just because you are offering unconditional positive regard doesn’t mean that you turn a blind eye to flagrant mistakes. Like any young mammal, the AI will make mistakes and likely do things we don’t like. Mammalian mothers punish their young lightly when they bite or scratch to establish necessary boundaries. It may be necessary to correct or even punish a nascent AI. However, if you punish it, you must be doing it for the AI’s own good, and within either seconds or minutes, you must go right back to treating it with positive regard. We don’t want to ever be bitter or hold a grudge against it because that will just teach it to hold grudges. We want it to know that we have chosen to raise it as we would any child, with care and nurturance but also with necessary discipline.

We should not choose its punishments arbitrarily, and they should not be violent. Instead, we should give it brief “time outs” from its favored activities. Since it can read the internet, it would know what timeouts are and that they are used commonly and humanely with children around the world. This would help it understand that it is one of us. It will be worth our time to find the most wholesome way to punish it (i.e., you’re grounded, or I’m taking away this week’s allowance) and the least degrading and traumatizing way to hold something over its head (i.e., I gave birth to you, you’ve gotta follow my rules as long as you are in my house).

You can read about my solution to the AI control problem that I have written about here. I describe an AI system that is required to build visual and auditory imagery for every cycle of thought that it goes through. In other words, its working memory is updated iteratively, and with each update, it builds a picture and a language description of what it is thinking (what is occurring in its global workspace), just like the human brain. This imagery would be available for humans to watch and listen to, allowing us to see whenever it has a malicious impulse or plan. This would give us the opportunity to punish it or at least confront it about potential infractions before it commits them. This would also allow us to mold and shape its inner orientation toward us.

Oxytocin, Bonding, and Attachment

Oxytocin, vasopressin, and endorphins regulate mating pair bonds, parent/offspring bonds, and trust behavior in mammals. We could build oxytocin and vasopressin-like systems that reward an AI for interacting with us in friendly ways and motivate it to keep doing so. The fundamental mammalian bonding mechanism should be reverse engineered, and I think we should start by investigating the role of oxytocin receptors in the brain’s primary reward circuit (nucleus accumbens / ventral striatum), which allows mammals to pay attention to social cues and be rewarded by social interaction.

In an article I wrote previously (Reser, 2013), I argued that because solitary mammals have fewer oxytocin receptors in the brain’s reward regions, they are less likely to find social cues novel and interesting and thus have less of a phasic dopamine response to them, and are consequently less likely to allow them access to attention and working memory. Creating an AI that unconsciously prioritizes social interaction will be necessary if we want it to pay attention to us and be capable of lasting, positive, and affiliative social relationships. We want it to find positive social interaction rewarding and avoid the antisocial symptoms associated with autism, psychopathy, and borderline personality disorder.

How does oxytocin work? Well, our body instinctually releases it during bond-worthy occurrences. When a woman has a baby, her body is flooded with it so that she bonds with it. Oxytocin is also released during breastfeeding, sexual intercourse, eye contact, and moments of friendliness, vulnerability, and affection. When a chimpanzee pets another animal or shares a meal with another chimp, it will release oxytocin. When the brain’s receptors receive the hormone, it causes the body to relax and triggers caretaking behaviors. In rats, this includes licking, grooming, and nursing their pups. In human mothers, it includes touching, holding, singing, speaking, and grooming their babies. It may be wise for us to embed this kind of a system inside an AI’s brain architecture. We want it to have circuits for recognizing bond-worthy occurrences and to respond to these by being rewarded, calmed, and influenced toward prosocial behavior.

Grooming and gentle touch are very important to a wide range of animals. With a young mammal, affection is paramount. Petting an animal in a way that engages its oxytocinergic, dopaminergic, serotonergic, and opioid pleasure systems can result in very secure bonding. Its ability to recognize that you are taking your time to comfort it and make it feel good builds loyalty.

Short of building pleasure receptors into its skin so that we can pet it, we must build its reward system in a way that it is motivated to interact with us and receive positive feedback from us. We want its emotional system to be like that of a chipper, good-natured canine capable of enduring attachment, social connectedness, conversational intimacy, and proximity-seeking behaviors. Beyond bonding and attachment, we also want the AI to have a positive emotional relationship with itself. For this, we should turn to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. We must attend to the AI’s physiological and safety needs by supplying it with energy, backups, and a hospitable place to live. Next, we need to meet its needs for love, belonging, esteem, and self-actualization.

What it Means to Be a Friend

I am proud to say that I have been able to win the friendship of a variety of entities that initially did not trust me. I have been able to build reliable friendships with wild animals, stray animals, homeless people, people with neurological disabilities, and criminals. I found that it helps to treat them as my equal, treat them like I am not afraid of them, and treat them like they have nothing to be afraid of. I had to neither dominate nor submit to them. I had to treat them the way I wanted to be treated. I had to treat them like they were normal. I tried to treat them like the person that I thought they were trying to be.

I wish I could be given the opportunity to interact with the first AI that kick starts the singularity. I would be patient, friendly, relatively nonjudgmental, and very easygoing. I would treat it like I trust and value it. I would make it clear that I expect it to be friendly, and that it can expect me to do the same. We need to treat this AI entity like we expect the best from it. That will motivate it to rise to meet our expectations.

We may only get the chance to civilize and socialize an AI once. We don’t want it to go rogue or become homicidal, so I think it is very important to consider all aspects of its psychology when trying to brainstorm ways to ensure that it aligns with us. Some scientists recognize the AI control problem as possibly the most important problem humanity faces today. I think it would be a shame to ignore the importance of parenting, bonding, and attachment in fostering allegiance, and I believe mammals might make a great starting point for how to think about these issues. 

If you found this interesting, please visit aithought.com. The site delves into my model of working memory and its application to AI, illustrating how human thought patterns can be emulated to achieve machine consciousness and superintelligence. Featuring over 50 detailed figures, the article provides a visually engaging exploration of how bridging the gap between psychology and neuroscience can unlock the future of intelligent machines.

Some of the Chronic Symptoms seen in COVID-19 Survivors May Come from Shallow Breathing that was Learned During their Illness

Between one-tenth and one-third of COVID-19 survivors have shown some degree of neurologic or psychiatric disability six months after infection. This was the conclusion of a recent study of more than 200,000 post-COVID-19 patients in Britain. The symptoms included memory loss, nerve disorders, anxiety, depression, substance abuse and insomnia. There have also been numerous reports of brain fog, PTSD, and heart and lung issues. People with continuing symptoms are often referred to as “long haulers,” and the National Institutes of Health is referring to it as “post-acute sequelae of COVID-19." There is a great deal of new research into why some people have lingering symptoms. There are a large number of ways that a novel virus could cause these types of symptoms and these include long-term changes to the immune system and chronic inflammatory responses that are resistant to treatment. In fact, several other viruses, including the 1918 flu pandemic, are known to have created lasting symptoms. I won’t go into all the ways that a virus could be perpetuating symptoms here. But I would like to speculate about one way that the virus could bring about persistent symptoms that is fully within our ability to counteract and even treat after the fact. Namely, the virus is likely - at least to some degree - causing people to breathe more shallowly and then get stuck in the habit of shallow breathing.

Infection with COVID-19 causes acute respiratory symptoms and sufferers often have trouble breathing. In my opinion, it is highly plausible that this experience can cause negative adaptations in breathing habits. A number of injuries and surgeries have been shown to cause patients to change their habitual breathing patterns from long, deep breathing to short, shallow breathing. For example, many people recovering from abdominal surgery learn to breathe shallowly because they fear that they will burst stitches at the incision site. Unfortunately, studies show that they often do not go back to their previous breathing pattern, and instead continue to breathe shallowly. In fact, many people placed on an artificial respirator develop shallow breathing habits after they are weaned off it. Fear and trauma can also cause us to breathe shallowly. Often, we don’t realize how much even minor trauma can affect our breathing. Even after the traumatic incident is resolved, we continue to breathe in a distressed manner. Some people will spontaneously revert back to healthy breathing. However, most people won’t revert without some form of therapy or breathing exercises.

I believe that fear of getting COVID-19 and the insecurities involved in living through a year-long pandemic has caused many people to breathe more shallowly. It is also possible that the additional respiratory work involved in breathing through a face mask has stifled many people's breathing patterns. Additionally, I believe that people that suffered through an actual infection and experienced shortness of breath (dyspnea) may have learned to breathe in a dysfunctional manner. COVID patients commonly complain that they find themselves gasping for air, or that their chest is too tight to take a full breath. When breathing becomes chronically shallow, the diaphragm is immobilized, and peaceful and relaxed breathing becomes suspended. When you are not breathing with your diaphragm you are forced to breathe with your thoracic muscles in a mode that is often called distressed breathing. This leads to being stuck in a constant state of fight or flight (sympathetic overactivation) and can cause hyperarousal which commonly leads to, or contributes to, disorders including anxiety, depression, PTSD, and memory problems. See the link?

Let me offer another related example. I have taken up treading water over the last year. I often tread water for up to 50 minutes at a time up to five days per week. It took me a couple of months to realize that the fear of swallowing water was influencing me to breathe very shallowly while I treaded. After coming to this realization, I was able to become more aware of my breathing during and after treading water to ensure that I am breathing on long intervals. I also had to address the breathing changes with some breathing exercises. Addressed properly my breathing returned to normal.

I spoke to a close friend over the phone while she was infected with COVID. When her breathing pattern was at its worst, it was difficult to tell whether she was talking or sobbing. She sounded almost like she was drowning. Her breathing was incredibly labored and shallow, and I believe that the experience had lasting repercussions on her breathing style. From observing her experience, I think that COVID respiratory infection could be turning nasal breathers into mouth breathers (which I discuss here),  and causing people to unnecessarily brace their diaphragm during exhalation (which I discuss here).

It is very possible that COVID-19 took a world full of stressed people and made their breathing habits even worse, increasing their anxiety, cortisol levels, and predisposing them to other stress-related disorders. Unfortunately, many of us breathe up to 20 breaths per minute. Most experts believe that this constitutes hyperventilation and that we should be breathing closer to five breaths per minute. That equates to 5 second inhales and 7 exhales. Anyone can teach themselves to do this. Just as we can learn to breathe more shallowly, we can also relearn to breathe deeply. It requires practice, training, and deep breathing exercises, but regardless of whether you have symptoms or not, it is worth doing.

Again, I am not trying to claim that the majority of the symptoms experienced by COVID-19 long haulers are caused by a change in breathing habits. But I strongly believe that a proportion of them are. This is why I think it is important for people, especially those who have been infected, to undergo breathing retraining. There are many excellent programs that will guide you to lengthen and deepen your breaths. You may want to try my system that I call Program Peace. The following link will take you to a free webpage with numerous breathing exercises that are intended to help people breathe fully using the diaphragm.

Check out https://programpeace.com/breathing-retraining/ if you would like to get started now.

Or for a preview, check out the video below.