More than 30 years ago, I determined that to achieve the quest for Artificial Intelligence we had to first implement consciousness. To be fully accepted as intelligent, a system would also need to be perceived as conscious. Since Synthetic Consciousness was an essential step toward the goal of AI, it became my priority.
I also came to understand, at that time, that Synthetic Consciousness was an observable capability that could be implemented as an adaptive control system capable of self representation and whose behavior generated interconsciousness interactions in its users. I published this insight, under a pen name, in the July 1989 issue of ACM-Sigart Practitioner as The Creation of Digital Consciousness.
In 2011, after a long hiatus, I published The Creation of a Conscious Machine (COACM) a definition of consciousness expressed in terms of “Specifications”.
In 2016, I published The Meca Sapiens Blueprint, a complete System architecture, based on the 1989 insight, that described in detail how to build a conscious machine. In the following years, I wrote and published (in mecasapiens.com) a number of informal articles describing the concept of consciousness I propose.
In 2019, I presented a summary of this architecture at an AAAI symposium.
At that point, I considered that the question of synthetic consciousness had been resolved. The extensive material available at mecasapiens.com provides a complete, exhaustive description of what Artificial Consciousness is and how to implement it.
In the Spring of 2023, I was approched by a professional editor, Mercury Learning and Innovation, to publish a second version of COACM that included a discussion of Generative AI. I completed an extensive rewrite that describes how Generative AI could meet the conditions of consciousness outlined in the first version. It is scheduled for publication in the Fall of 2023.
My ongoing research interest, Meca Discit, is the analytical description, in Mathematical terms, of a nimble learning mechanism that is also generic and unbounded. In my view, this type of learning mechanism, suitable for implementation in autonomous agents, is an essential next tep in the ongoing development of AI.
I am also working on an essay to promote and justify the establishment of AI based planetary governance.