Colin wrote: > The only working, known model of general intelligence is the human. If we > base AGI on anything that fails to account scientifically and completely for > *all* aspects of human cognition, including consciousness, then we open > ourselves to critical inferiority... and the rest of science will simply > find the group an irrelevant cultish backwater. Strategically the group > would do well to make choices that attract the attention of the 'machine > consciousness' crowd - they are directly linked to neuroscience via cog sci. > >
Actually, I very strongly disagree with the above. While I am an advocate of machine consciousness research, and will be co-organizing a machine consciousness workshop in Hong Kong in June 2009, I do **not** agree that focusing on machine consciousness would be likely to help AGI to get better accepted in the general scientific community. Rather, I think that consciousness research is currently considered at least as eccentric as AGI research, by the scientific mainstream ... and is considered far MORE eccentric than AGI research by the AI research mainstream, e.g. the AAAI. So, discussing issues of machine consciousness may be interesting and very worthwhile for AGI in some scientific and conceptual... but I really really don't think that, at the present time, more closely allying AGI with machine consciousness would do anything but cause trouble for AGI's overall scientific reputation. Frankly I think that "machine consciousness" has at least as high a chance of being considered an "irrelevant cultish backwater" than AGI ... though I don't think that either field deserves that fate. Comparing the two fields, I note that AGI has a larger and more active series of conferences than machine consciousness, and is also ... pathetic as it may be ... better-funded overall ;-p .... Regarding the connection to neuroscience and cog sci: obviously, AGI does not need machine consciousness as an intermediary to connect to those fields, it is already closely connected. As one among many examples, Stan Franklin's LIDA architecture, a leading AGI approach, was originated in collaboration with Bernard Baars, a leading cognitive psychologist (and consciousness theorist, as it happens). And we had a session on AGI and Neuroscience at AGI-08, chaired by neuroscientist Randal Koene. I laid out my own thoughts on consciousness in some detail in The Hidden Pattern ... I'm not trying to diss consciousness research at all ... just pointing out that the posited reason for tying it in with AGI seems not to be correct... -- Ben G ------------------------------------------- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
