Friday, September 9, 2016

Work on machine consciousness

Hobson decomposes consciousness into 10 functional components which he briefly defines:
( in Scientific Approaches to Consciousness, Cohen and Schooler, Psychology Press, 1996, page 383 )

Attention:                Selection of input data
Perception:              Representation of input data
Memory:                 Retrieval of stored representations
Orientation:            Representation of time, place, and person
Thought:                 Reflection upon representation
Narrative:               Linguistic symbolization of representations
Emotion:                Feelings about representations
Instinct:                  Innate propensities to act
Intention:               Representations of goals
Volition:                Decisions to act

My artificial intelligence Asa H performs all of these functions, some more completely than others.

Attention:               See blogs of 1 June 2011, 21 June 2014, 15 October 2015 for
                               example.
Perception:             This works well though we would like to have more input sensors.
Memory:                Our case vector memory works well.
Orientation:            Time is represented explicitly. Our self model can represent a person.
                                Asa can recognize where it is by its surroundings.
Thought:                 Extrapolation and other learning algorithms examine and operate on
                               the case memories.
Narrative:               Asa has a simple natural language vocabulary but this is primitive
                               compared to that used by most humans.
Emotion:                Asa has a pain circuit and an advanced value system.  It does not
                               share all of our human emotions.
Instinct:                  Asa can have pain and reflexes, a drive to reproduce, etc.
Intention:               Asa's value system defines its goals.
Volition:                Asa acts so as to optimize its vector utility.

I believe that Asa is more conscious than humans in some ways* and less conscious in others.

* in that it has access to and control over some of its internal processes which humans don't.
Asa also has a much larger STM (short term memory) capacity.

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