Topics

• Overview of Perspectives
• Taking Us Apart
• Putting Us Back Together
• Implications
• Concluding Remarks

Areas of Study

• Neuroscience
• Psychology
• Artificial Intelligence
• Philosophy
• Linguistics
• Cognitive Science
• Science Fiction

Techniques of Study

• Invasive (autopsy, direct stimulation)
• Non-invasive scanning (PET, Fast-MRI)
• Engineering study of problem space
• Questioning and testing the patient
• Introspection
• Hypothesis and logic

Regions of the Brain

• Frontal, Parietal, Occipital, Temporal Lobes
• Thalamus, Hypothalamus, Amygdala,
  Hippocampus (LTP), Reticular Formation
• Cerebellum, Brain Stem, Spinal Cord
• Broca’s and Wernicke’s Areas (language)
• Sensory and Motor strips

Cognitive Time-scale

Neurotransmitter release Neuron firing Image perception Unconscious reaction Conscious reaction Speech production

Short-term memory Train of thought Same-day recurrence Wake-sleep cycle Long-term memory Human lifetime

Laws of Qualitative Structure

Cell Doctrine in Biology Plate Tectonics in Geology Germ Theory of Disease Atomism in Chemistry for Cognitive Science?

Candidates Symbols & searches Information processing Learning systems Born of complexity and capacity Exact architecture?

Theory Attempts

• Homunculus
• Mind/Body Duality (Descartes)
• Conscious/Unconscious (Freud)
• Id, Ego, and Super-Ego (Freud)
• Symbolic Processing (Turing)
• Bicameral/Narrative Mind (Jaynes)
• Society of Mind (Minsky)

Who Are You?

• Information store (narrative, facts known)
• Personality (actors & masks, roles)
• Facilities (skills, abilities, habits)
• Potentials (synthesis, what reaction?)
• Language and culture
• a Face, a Voice, a Self-image, an Identity

Two Definitions of AI

Build a box that can do what the mind can do Turing Test Solving real problems Understanding problem domains Just machines

Build a mind Understanding how our minds work Search for things which learn, adapt Consciousness

Alternates for "Conscious"

Subjective Narrative Autonomous In Command Awake Alert, Responsive Altered Mood

Self-aware Sensitive, Feeling Alive Possessing a soul First-person Adding memory Socially competent?

Subjectivity and Physics

• Shannon’s Law - Info free of Meaning
• Objectivity and the free-flow of information
• Physics of forgotten bits - did it really happen?
• Relativity vs. Quantum Mechanics
• Special nature of the present?
• Privacy and frames of reference

How Conscious are Animals?

• Animals are autonomous and mobile
• Do earthworms feel pain?
• What were the first animals to sleep?
• Sentience vs. self-awareness
• Dreams and the inner life of mammals
• Far-reaching inner life of narrating humans

Narration - Intro

• The story we tell ourselves
• The voice inside our head
• Auditory rehearsal - sub-vocalization
• Language (in)dependent fact store
• Slightly faster than speech
• Available for immediate retrieval
• Sparse long-term retention

Narration - How Important?

• How much of consciousness is narration?
• How much of higher thought found here?
• What is and isn’t solved by the narrative?
• How tightly coupled to language?
• How testable is the content of the narration?
• Why Introspection is important.

Language and Narration

• Improves the quality of the narration
• Enriched conceptual set via vocabulary
• Improved representation of parse trees
• Auditory hallucination easier to remember
• Works well with external use of language

Narration Experiments

Mind Reading Sub-vocalization tap Signal decoding Record the narration Present it to patient Accurately recognized? Long-term retention?

Language Dependence Creative task for lab rat Long-term fact memory Foreign languages Source of Fact 1st person, 3rd person Represented the same?

Design Me a Human

Visual System Motor System Other Sensory Language handling Concept store-Lexicon Specific fact store

Dexterous Body 3D Statics, Dynamics Visual, Audio catalogs Goals and planning Behaviors and habits Novelty handling

Design Approach

• Forcing emergent properties to be hardwired
• How adaptable or brittle, if it can’t learn?
• Plop down an undifferentiated learning mechanism,
  and teach it for twenty years

Representational Flexibility

Plasticity Hard or Fixed Supple or Flexible Crystalizing

Building Blocks Avoiding the use of a pre-selected rep. Promotion through re-use Convergence on a symbol set

Neural Nets

Difference with symbolic systems Robust distributed storage & processing Requires no additional physical basis Can be simulated

How essential? How to do large-scale engineering? Higher organization? Does it resolve to symbolic processing?

Self-Engineering Systems

• Unaided improvement in performance
• Neural nets
• Self-organizing maps
• A-Life and other evolutionary systems (Darwin, LaMarck)
• Economies, Scientific Community
• Learning as feedback to a model

Teaching and Training

• Nurture them as children?
• Train one and replicate?
• General knowledge vs. specific skills
• Integration of basic systems, capabilities
• Giving home computers social skills
• Shoulder-based apprentice

A Social Computer

• Speech synthesis and recognition
• Expression and gesture (Facial S&R)
• Appropriateness and politeness
• Modeling of other’s feelings
• Comprehension
• Competence

Hardware

Drives progress Exponential / S-Curve with no visible end Circa 50% per year "Room at the Bottom" and limits of Physics P and NP Complete

Processors - Speed Disks, RAM - Storage Comm. - Bandwidth Imaging and Sensors Rendering output Organization and Integration Specialty hardware

Implications of AI

What Changes Standard societal unit Sharing of experience Speed of interactions Legal entities, rights Who’s in control Value of human life

What Stays the Same Markets, Goods, Services Transportation Existence of Politics Science Circle of life and death Local decision making

Possible Hybrids

Neural Interfaces Wearable or implants? Memory supplements Sub-vocalization tap Interpreted fMRI Motor & sensory strip Backups, privacy Personality software

Group Minds Permanent / temporary Group size Family / corporation? Location / locality Genetically engineered New species / mules Body modification

Problem Dimensions

• Intentional vs. Unintentional Creation
• Biological Hybrid vs. Pure Machine
• Mobility vs. Sentience
• Engineered vs. Evolved
• Optional vs. Inevitable
• Peaceful co-existence vs. War

Concluding Remarks

• Lots of tough, but solvable problems
• Narration is my favorite candidate
• Hardware will drive progress
• Coming to terms with what we are
• Major implications to society, history