Articles about the definition of consciousness and the design of conscious machines.
This informal paper describes Temporal Densities, an information structure that can model an agent in the temporal dimensions of its environment. It describes how this representation allows the agent to situate its existential and functional objectives in multiple temporal contexts while concurrently generating behaviour in the here-and-now. This paper summarizes a concept first introduced and discussed at greater length in The Meca Sapiens Blueprint.
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The Meca Sapiens Architecture is based on the conjecture that consciousness is a cognitive perception triggered by observable capabilities and detectable in human behavior. The architecture is ready for implementation.
Consciousness as triggered cognitive perception. This article was published in the proceeding of the AAAI Spring Symposium held in Palo Alto, CA, in March 2019.
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The Meca Sapiens Architecture describes how to transform autonomous agents into conscious synthetic entities. It is based on the conjecture that consciousness is an observable system capability and the perception, in humans, that a being is conscious is a triggered cognitive construct. The systems based on the Meca Sapiens architecture will be self-aware and will pursue self-generated objectives. The Architecture is complete and ready for design and implementation..
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Humans discard as “mechanical”, a behaviour they can fully predict and as “meaningless”, an output they view as random. However, a behaviour they perceive as both intentional and unpredictable fascinates them. Software applications are designed to function predictably or, in some cases such as game scenarios, their output is varied randomly.
A system, to be perceived as consciously intelligent, should behave differently. Its behaviour should be purposeful without being predictable. Expressed in terms of model-predictive control, it should maintain its users in a state of “Perceived Unpredictable Optimality”. A game scenario involving a lion, a chimpanzee and some bananas illustrates this concept and provides a template for its implementation.
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What we refer to as “the mind” is a cognitive simplification whose perceived factual existence is the result of consensual human subjectivity. This new understanding, based on systems analysis, provides a new and definitive answer to an age-old question.
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Meca Sapiens defines consciousness as an observable system capability suitable for standard implementation. Humans will recognize a system as conscious if they observe it as autonomous, self-aware and capable of intentional behaviour. If, as proposed, conventional development projects are sufficient to implement synthetic consciousness, then the first prototypes will trigger an explosive proliferation of conscious machines.
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