Conscious-Robots.com is an Internet portal dedicated to the scientific research in Machine Consciousness. This field of artificial intelligence is very much related to cognitive robotics, and the following terms are often used as synonyms: Artificial Consciousness, Synthetic Consciousness and Robot Consciousness. Although much more detailed definitions can be found in these web pages, we could briefly define Machine Consciousness as the research on producing consciousness in an artificial device (like a robot) using engineering techniques. Understanding human consciousness is a great challenge, hence Machine Consciousness problem is even harder. There is no doubt that these problems have to be addressed from multiple disciplines. This site aim to follow this multidisciplinary approach including information and resources from many fields, from philosophy to genetic programming.
Conscious-Robots.com offers the following content:
- Resources, publications and information about Machine Consciousness research and related AI techniques.
- Latest news and reviews about conscious software, conscious machines and robots used for research in machine consciosness.
- Discussion Forums about Machine consciousness and related fields (Forums section).
- Almost real time news feeds from many sources related to machine consciousness, AI and neuroscience (News feeds section).
Microsoft Robotics Studio Developer 2008 Pages.
It’s becoming clear that with all the brain and consciousness theories out there, the proof will be in the pudding. By this I mean, can any particular theory be used to create a human adult level conscious machine. My bet is on the late Gerald Edelman’s Extended Theory of Neuronal Group Selection. The lead group in robotics based on this theory is the Neurorobotics Lab at UC at Irvine. Dr. Edelman distinguished between primary consciousness, which came first in evolution, and that humans share with other conscious animals, and higher order consciousness, which came to only humans with the acquisition of language. A machine with only primary consciousness will probably have to come first.
What I find special about the TNGS is the Darwin series of automata created at the Neurosciences Institute by Dr. Edelman and his colleagues in the 1990’s and 2000’s. These machines perform in the real world, not in a restricted simulated world, and display convincing physical behavior indicative of higher psychological functions necessary for consciousness, such as perceptual categorization, memory, and learning. They are based on realistic models of the parts of the biological brain that the theory claims subserve these functions. The extended TNGS allows for the emergence of consciousness based only on further evolutionary development of the brain areas responsible for these functions, in a parsimonious way. No other research I’ve encountered is anywhere near as convincing.
I post because on almost every video and article about the brain and consciousness that I encounter, the attitude seems to be that we still know next to nothing about how the brain and consciousness work; that there’s lots of data but no unifying theory. I believe the extended TNGS is that theory. My motivation is to keep that theory in front of the public. And obviously, I consider it the route to a truly conscious machine, primary and higher-order.
My advice to people who want to create a conscious machine is to seriously ground themselves in the extended TNGS and the Darwin automata first, and proceed from there, by applying to Jeff Krichmar’s lab at UC Irvine, possibly. Dr. Edelman’s roadmap to a conscious machine is at https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.10461, and here is a video of Jeff Krichmar talking about some of the Darwin automata, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7Uh9phc1Ow