This SpringerBrief is a computational study of significant concerns and their role in forming
long-term relationships between intelligent entities. Significant concerns include attitudes
preferences affinities and values that are held to be highly valued and meaningful: The means
through which a person may find deeply held identity purpose and transformation. Significant
concerns always engage the emotions and senses in a way that simply holding an opinion may or
may not. For example experiencing a significant concern may provoke deep feelings of awe and
wonder in a way that deciding what to have for lunch probably does not even if the lunch
decision involves a rich array of preferences and values. Significant concerns also include
what Emmons has called ultimate concerns. The author builds upon this base by considering the
hypothetical case of intelligence in androids. An android is defined as a human-like robot that
humans would accept as equal to humans in how they perform and behave in society. An android as
defined in this book is not considered to be imitating a human nor is its purpose to deceive
humans into believing that it is a human. Instead the appropriately programmed android
self-identifies as a non-human with its own integrity as a person. Therefore a computational
understanding of personhood and how persons - whether human or android - participate in
relationships is essential to this perspective on artificial intelligence. Computational
Modelling of Robot Personhood and Relationality describes in technical detail an implementation
of a computational model called Affinity that takes the form of a simulation of a population of
entities that form maintain and break relationships with each other depending upon a rich
range of values motivations attitudes and beliefs. Future experimentation and improvements
of this model may be used not only to gain a wider understanding of human persons but may also
form a preliminary cognitive model of the reasoning process of an android.
