NCAIMay 22, 2021

Edelman's Steps Toward a Conscious Artifact

arXiv:2105.10461v2
Originality Synthesis-oriented
AI Analysis

It addresses the problem of artificial consciousness for researchers in neuroscience and AI, but is incremental as it revisits an old proposal.

The paper presents Gerald Edelman's unpublished roadmap from 2006 for creating a conscious artifact, based on the author's meeting notes, and claims it remains groundbreaking.

In 2006, during a meeting of a working group of scientists in La Jolla, California at The Neurosciences Institute (NSI), Gerald Edelman described a roadmap towards the creation of a Conscious Artifact. As far as I know, this roadmap was not published. However, it did shape my thinking and that of many others in the years since that meeting. This short paper, which is based on my notes taken during the meeting, describes the key steps in this roadmap. I believe it is as groundbreaking today as it was more than 15 years ago.

Foundations

The foundational work for this paper's niche, ranked by how specifically the neighbourhood builds on it — not by global fame.

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