The Konrad Artificial Consciousness Project:
Technical Scope and Aims
Copyright Notice: This material was
written and published in Wales by Derek J. Smith (Chartered Engineer). It forms
part of a multifile e-learning resource, and subject only to acknowledging
Derek J. Smith's rights under international copyright law to be identified as
author may be freely downloaded and printed off in single complete copies
solely for the purposes of private study and/or review. Commercial exploitation
rights are reserved. The remote hyperlinks have been selected for the academic
appropriacy of their contents; they were free of offensive and litigious
content when selected, and will be periodically checked to have remained so. Copyright © 2011-2018, Derek J. Smith.
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First published online 09:00 GMT 15th March 2011. This
version [2.0 - copyright] 09:00 BST 3rd July 2018.
1 - Introduction
Konrad is a
"proof of concept" artificial intelligence (AI) system. The first
lines of code were written in August 2007, and the first successful test run
took place in March 2008 [see Press Release
(historic
pdf)]. Since then,
development has been carried out in stages as further areas of functionality
have been added. This document provides some background to the project and
identifies some hopefully useful further reading.
2 - Project Background
The Konrad software is the
product of an academic collaboration between Derek J. Smith, Consultant Cognitive
Scientist, and International
Software Products, Toronto. It is grounded on the CA-IDMS database platform
and its ultimate aim is to validate the technical hypothesis that the currency
indicators maintained by CA-IDMS have functional equivalents in the biological
nervous system, where "second messenger" neurotransmitter mechanisms
[more on these]
mark the location of items of recently activated long-term memory. Currency
indicators - artificial or biological - are in this respect crucial to such
cognitive functions as perception, attention, phenomenal awareness, and behavioural planning and execution; any faculty, in fact,
where the mind needs to keep track of where it has got to in a prolonged
processing sequence. To the extent that this hypothesis might eventually be
supported it promises engineers more autonomous AI and robotic systems, and psychologists greater understanding of the natural mind.
3 - Design Principles
Konrad is an
"evidence-based" design, adopting and doing its best to integrate a
large number of individually well-respected psychological theories, not least
the following [in alphabetical order] .....
Arkin's (1990, 2009) theory of robotic autonomy
Arnheim's (1974) theory of perception in art
Austin's (1962) and Searle's (1969) theory of speech
acts
Brentano's (1874) notion of perceptual Vorstellung [=
presentation] [more
on this]
Craik's (1948) theory of "discontinuous"
cyclical cognition [more on this]
Dennett's (1978) hierarchical model of cognition [more on this]
Edelman and Tononi's (2000)
"Dynamic Core Theory" of consciousness [more
on this]
Ellis and Young's (1988) "transcoding model"
[more on this]
Freud's (1895) theory of physiological
"cathexis" [see
Freud's Project]
Heidegger's (1927) notions of Dasein and In-der-Welt-Sein
[more
on these]
Kernberg's (1967) theory of ego integrity versus "splitting" [more on
this]
Klein's "object relations" theory of
psychosexual development [more on this]
Lorenz and Tinbergen's "ethological" theory
of animal behaviour [more on this]
Pylyshyn's (1978) notion of "meta-representation" and "orders of
belief"
Rasmussen's (1983) hierarchical model of control error
[more on this]
Wertheimer's (1923) "Gestalt Laws" of
perception
4 - Potential Application Areas
Konrad is currently capable of simulating acts of cognition lasting up
to 10 seconds or so, and of then justifying its final response with a microscopically detailed hard copy
telling you how it did what it did and calculating what biochemical resources
were consumed in doing it.
Unlike most software, moreover, Konrad is designed to be as useful when
it fails as when it works. The system is
designed to provide fundamental theoretical insight into the structures of the
human self by recording how those structures can fail in characteristic ways.
For example, by manipulating Konrad's
command parameters it is possible to simulate the sort of incompletely
connected, pointer-corrupt, experientially skewed, or abnormally structured
semantic networks which might underlie the following .....
·
error in
general, and control error in particular
·
speech errors
and dysfluencies
·
learning
disorders such as dyslexia and dyscalculia
·
social
adjustment problems such as criminality, pathological gambling, oppositional
defiance, and elective homelessness
·
politico-affiliative
problems such as political extremism and the sort of suicidality seen in
suicide bombers
·
psychiatric
disorders, especially those whose symptoms include hearing voices
·
post-traumatic
stress disorders, to the extent that the stressor in question involves damage
of some sort to the structures of the self
5 - Past Software Versions and Project Milestones
6 - Research Collaboration
CONTACT THE AUTHOR AT smithsrisca@btinternet.com
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