Series On Machine Consciousness - Böcker

THIS BOOK is the fully revised and updated second edition of "Consciousness and Robot Sentience". With lots of new material, it will provide new insights into artificial intelligence (AI) and machine consciousness, beyond materials published in the first edition. The organization of this book has been streamlined for better clarity and continuity of the lines of arguments.The perspective of AI has been added to this edition. It is shown that contemporary AI has a hidden problem, which prevents it from becoming a true intelligent agent. A self-evident solution to this problem is given in this book.This solution is surprisingly connected with the concepts of qualia, the mind-body problem and consciousness. These are the hard problems of consciousness that so far have been without viable solution. Unfortunately, the solution to the hidden problem of AI cannot be satisfactorily implemented, unless the phenomena of qualia and consciousness are first understood. In this book an explanation of consciousness is presented, one that rejects material and immaterial substances, dualism, panpsychism, emergence and metaphysics. What remains is obvious. This explanation excludes consciousness in digital computers, but allows the artificial creation of consciousness in one natural-like way, by associative non-computational neural networks.The proof of a theory calls for empirical verification. In this case, the proof could be in the form of a sentient robot. This book describes a step towards this in the form of the author's small experimental robot XCR-1. This robot has evolved through the years, and has now new cognitive abilities, which are described.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has seen rapid advancements in recent years, particularly in the areas of deep learning and the ability to generalize from concrete objects to abstract concepts. Meanwhile, in the study of machine consciousness, a universally agreed definition among scientists and philosophers is still lacking.This book raises a number of issues surrounding the nature and implications of conscious artificial intelligence:This edited volume consists of 10 chapters that highlight the prospects of machine consciousness and study the subject from several perspectives. The issues are wide-ranging and include topics such as the metaverse, a computational approach to pain and suffering, universal cognitive intelligence, intentional action, the categorization of conscious machines, and more. The volume is designed as a reference guide for researchers, practitioners, and students interested in the intersection of AI and consciousness.

Aristotle's convincing philosophy is likely to have shaped (even indirectly) many of our current beliefs, prejudices and attitudes to life. This includes the way in which our mind (that is, our capacity to have private thoughts) appears to elude a scientific description. This book is about a scientific ingredient that was not available to Aristotle: the science of information. Would the course of the philosophy of the mind have been different had Aristotle pronounced that the matter of mind was information? This “mind is information” assertion is often heard in contemporary debates, and this book explores the verities and falsehoods of this proposition.

Robots are becoming more human, but could they also become sentient and have human-like consciousness?What is consciousness, exactly?It is a fact that our thoughts and consciousness are based on the neural activity of the brain. It is also a fact that we do not perceive our brain activity as it really is — patterns of neural firings. Instead, we perceive our sensations and thoughts apparently as they are. What kind of condition would transform the neural activity into this kind of internal appearance? This is the basic problem of consciousness.The author proposes an explanation that also provides preconditions for true conscious cognition — the requirement of a direct perceptive system with inherent sub-symbolic and symbolic information processing. Associative neural information processing with distributed signal representations is introduced as a method that satisfies these requirements.Conscious robot cognition also calls for information integration and sensorimotor integration. This requirement is satisfied by the Haikonen Cognitive Architecture (HCA).This book demystifies both the enigmatic philosophical issues of consciousness and the practical engineering issues of conscious robots by presenting them in an easy-to-understand manner for the benefit of students, researchers, philosophers and engineers in the field.

This book discusses two main cultural problems behind the failure of machine consciousness and artificial general intelligence (AGI) projects over many decades. The first problem recognizes that building a conscious AGI means building an artificial scientist. The book identifies the responsible pitfalls in mainstream scientific behavior and eliminates them by proposing a new operational framework for scientists called “Dual Aspect Science”.The second problem arises because scholars involved in machine consciousness and AGI essentially aim to replicate brains with computers. They are demonstrably not doing this, and this failure has been prevalent since the rise of computers. Instead, the book discusses the possibility of doing real empirical neuroscience by means of artificial materials that literally do what the brain does.Inspired by Thomas Kuhn, one of the most influential philosophers of science of the twentieth century, this compendium proposes a fresh perspective on machine consciousness, on AGI and, more generally, on how the machinery of science might need to change to accommodate it.