tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-287242602011-12-15T02:48:05.311ZNatural Machine Intelligence and Machine Consciousness - fantasy or near-future fact? How can we get there, and do we want to undertake the journey?P@http://www.blogger.com/profile/00277860491414170317noreply@blogger.comBlogger191100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28724260.post-660690115441829212007-11-08T18:36:00.000Z2007-11-08T18:37:36.678Z

(Cross-posted at RedGloo)Operational Consciousness is a book I gladly recommend to anyone in the field of consciousness studies, and especially with regard to Machine Consciousness.On the cover, it says :"Consciousness is not a state of mindIt is a procedureIt is not an optional extra.It is an indispensable and integral part of any system, biological or artificial, which has a high level of

P@http://www.blogger.com/profile/00277860491414170317noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28724260.post-18917573166766888222007-09-22T14:15:00.000+01:002007-09-22T14:19:50.660+01:00

I have been very bad at updating this blog, to the extent that I imagine nobody who read it before will care very much whether I update it now!I have been posting some thoughts and background on Machine Intelligence and on areas of psychology, social science, philosophy and various other things over at http://parslow.eu - under the Pat's Research links, and similar.I have been particularly

P@http://www.blogger.com/profile/00277860491414170317noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28724260.post-1149614311276450212006-06-06T18:18:00.000+01:002006-06-06T18:18:31.280+01:00

To me at least; I just noticed an ad for psychology courses on this page… I thought the preponderance of computer related postings would probably drown out the consciousness related stuff so far – but I was wrong!   No time to post today really, but this is just to mention (and to remind myself to do it) that I am planning to outline the system map of the brain functions I believe is

P@http://www.blogger.com/profile/00277860491414170317noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28724260.post-1149459892771523472006-06-04T23:24:00.000+01:002006-06-04T23:24:52.776+01:00

Searching for things is a time consuming problem.  It is why, for instance, we file things in an office environment, and keep things in a nice(?) structured order in libraries.  Because we impose a structure on the data held, it is easier to find what we need, when we need it.   The problem is, not everything is neatly ordered, and indeed, with some things there are just so many possibilities

P@http://www.blogger.com/profile/00277860491414170317noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28724260.post-1149180252444760892006-06-01T17:44:00.000+01:002006-06-04T22:28:32.690+01:00

I am very excited to be participating in the International Workshop on Cognitive Robotics, Intelligence and Control, 2006 in August this year. I will have to submit a one page summary of my research interests, which means I will have to be rather succinct. It looks as though there are some excellent speakers going to be there. I have done a minimalistic amount of background research on them (

P@http://www.blogger.com/profile/00277860491414170317noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28724260.post-1149098797289089312006-05-31T19:06:00.000+01:002006-05-31T19:06:37.380+01:00

This is not an incitement to click on the ads, but I happened to have a look at what was being advertised on my page (seems only sensible, really, and I was careful to do it in such a way as to not break my agreement not to click on them with Google) and one of them was for a product called Synapse from Peltarion.   I had never heard of them before, so I took a quick look.  It is a nice piece

P@http://www.blogger.com/profile/00277860491414170317noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28724260.post-1149022780129051152006-05-30T21:59:00.000+01:002006-05-30T21:59:40.180+01:00

LCS   These are an interesting class of beastie.  They are not connectionist, so don’t earn my full favour (!), but they certainly live up to their name, for low numbers of discrete dimensions in the problem space, at least.  They use populations of classifiers which associate a pattern in the observable environment with an action that can be performed (or, for more complex systems, actions

P@http://www.blogger.com/profile/00277860491414170317noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28724260.post-1148725492951652062006-05-27T11:24:00.000+01:002006-05-27T11:24:52.966+01:00

Each year, one of our lecturers sets a coursework to write a C++ implementation of an MLP.  The students are only just learning C++ at this stage, and the MLP is new to them too.  It is strange though that in my year when we did this (the first year he set it) the marks were generally good, and yet subsequently they have been, well, not at all good (I don’t know about this year’s, but have

P@http://www.blogger.com/profile/00277860491414170317noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28724260.post-1148644699483589432006-05-26T12:58:00.000+01:002006-05-26T12:58:19.490+01:00

A Random UniverseI just found an awesome blog by Eric - one, it seems, of many he has made. I must find time to read through some of his archived posts. Good work Eric!

P@http://www.blogger.com/profile/00277860491414170317noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28724260.post-1148643344377812782006-05-26T12:35:00.000+01:002006-05-26T12:35:44.383+01:00

Remember the n-tuples? No? they are down there (V) a little bit.   The smaller the value of n, the smaller the memory requirement, which is obviously a Good Thing.  The problem is, if you make n too small, each of the RAM elements can become saturated very quickly.  I like to work with extreme examples, so let us look at n=0.  This is not going to be interesting, but I feel the urge.  An

P@http://www.blogger.com/profile/00277860491414170317noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28724260.post-1148630055642999102006-05-26T08:54:00.000+01:002006-05-26T08:54:15.646+01:00

You may have gathered I have a strong interest in machine intelligence and machine consciousness.  I have many thoughts on the matter, including the moral and ethical aspects involved.   Professor Kevin Warwick is a name you may know.  He is the Cybernetics Professor who had an implant in his arm so that he could control a robotic arm, and had it connected up to the internet.  At the time

P@http://www.blogger.com/profile/00277860491414170317noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28724260.post-1148628818952160332006-05-26T08:33:00.000+01:002006-06-04T22:30:50.696+01:00

Some of these blogs entries will be about specific AI related technologies.  They are to give a flavour, and in some cases to provide a bit of detail.  For starters, let us have a look at a form of ‘artificial neural network’ which I have always considered to be something of a cheat.   n-tuple RAM networks   If you have a pattern recognition problem, one way you can train the computer to

P@http://www.blogger.com/profile/00277860491414170317noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28724260.post-1148593234485416832006-05-25T22:40:00.000+01:002006-05-25T22:40:34.490+01:00

Just a little rant.  Computer games have ‘AI’ for the computer opponents.  But what, if anything, is meant to seem intelligent about them?  They are quite clearly little more than simple scripts, and remind me of Hutchen’s (sp?) contribution to the Loebner prize (which, by the way, was an excellent entry, and one which shows the futility of the Turing Test as it is currently envisaged).  For me

P@http://www.blogger.com/profile/00277860491414170317noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28724260.post-1148592335694295682006-05-25T22:25:00.000+01:002006-05-25T22:25:35.703+01:00

To be fair, I only came across mention of this chap this evening.  He seems to be highly accomplished, and earns my respect for clearly stating that he has no academic degrees.  But on his page about AI, it seems to me that he commits many a cardinal sin.   He starts out with a reasonable thought experiment – the one where each neuron is replaced in turn by an artificial substitute. 

P@http://www.blogger.com/profile/00277860491414170317noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28724260.post-1148589201098537052006-05-25T21:33:00.000+01:002006-05-27T10:10:05.723+01:00

Sometimes when I think about consciousness, it is very tempting to fall into the dualist ‘trap’.  Our sense of self, of being able to make our own decisions, of being somehow more than a bunch of hydrocarbons sloshing about in a whole heap of water, is very persuasive.  Rationally I think that it is all a clever illusion played on us by the part of our brain we call our ‘mind’, but I also feel

P@http://www.blogger.com/profile/00277860491414170317noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28724260.post-1148571838492690292006-05-25T16:43:00.000+01:002006-05-25T16:43:58.496+01:00

This deserves a post of its very own.   What do I mean by consciousness in this context?  Well, let me look at things I don’t mean first.   I do not mean conscious as opposed to unconscious.  I have never felt that the difference is very well defined, anyway.  If you are unconscious, what is your consciousness doing?  Why can’t you perceive it?  Or if you can, why is it unable to interact

P@http://www.blogger.com/profile/00277860491414170317noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28724260.post-1148569479457867212006-05-25T16:04:00.000+01:002006-05-25T16:04:39.460+01:00

A quick aside. You may notice that I am not particularly interested in rules based AI.  "Why is that?" I hear you cry.   Well, it serves a perfectly good purpose - it is an engineering feat, essentially, well positioned to fulfill a particular problem solving role. It is mildly interesting when it is used in a learning context.  And I don't mean when you have to sit through lectures about it,

P@http://www.blogger.com/profile/00277860491414170317noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28724260.post-1148567531025341982006-05-25T15:16:00.000+01:002006-05-26T11:48:42.626+01:00

"The meaning of a word is in its use"artificial (from answer.com)ar·ti·fi·cial adj. Made by humans; produced rather than natural. Brought about or caused by sociopolitical or other human-generated forces or influences: set up artificial barriers against women and minorities; an artificial economic boom. Made in imitation of something natural; simulated: artificial teeth. Not genuine or natural

P@http://www.blogger.com/profile/00277860491414170317noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28724260.post-1148564308946780872006-05-25T14:37:00.000+01:002006-05-25T15:15:48.446+01:00

AI.A handy acronym which covers multiple things. Otherwise known as confusing - in this case it is not about artificial insemination, but artificial intelligence.Or rather, it isn't. I have a problem with the word 'artificial'. It implies something is not entirely 'real'. In this sense, the term "artificial intelligence" implies to me the sort of intelligence that school leavers typically have.

P@http://www.blogger.com/profile/00277860491414170317noreply@blogger.com0