Cognitive Approach to Conscious Machines - Softcover

Haikonen, Pentti O.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0907845428 ISBN 13: 9780907845423

Publisher: Imprint Academic, 2003

Synopsis

Could a machine have an immaterial mind? The author argues that true conscious machines can be built, but rejects artificial intelligence and classical neural networks in favour of the emulation of the cognitive processes of the brain―the flow of inner speech, inner imagery and emotions. This results in a non-numeric meaning-processing machine with distributed information representation and system reactions. It is argued that this machine would be conscious; it would be aware of its own existence and its mental content and perceive this as immaterial. Novel views on consciousness and the mind–body problem are presented. This book is a must for anyone interested in consciousness research and the latest ideas in the forthcoming technology of mind.

About this title

About the Author:

Dr Pentti Haikonen is an experienced contributor to the field of machine consciousness, conducting research on the topic for over 10 years. He is currently a Principal Scientist in cognitive technology at the Nokia Research Center, Helsinki, and has written the book "The Cognitive Approach to Conscious Machines" (Imprint Academic, 2003) and the book chapter "Artificial Minds and Conscious Machines" in "Visions of Mind: Architectures for Cognition and Affect" (Idea Group Inc., 2005). Haikonen is known for putting forward the theory that "the brain is definitely not a computer. Thinking is not an execution of programmed strings of commands. The brain is not a numerical calculator either. We do not think by numbers." Rather than trying to achieve mind and consciousness by identifying and implementing their underlying computational rules, Haikonen proposes "a special cognitive architecture to reproduce the processes of perception, inner imagery, inner speech, pain, pleasure, emotions, and the cognitive functions behind these." He has given lectures on machine cognition at the Helsinki University of Technology and has several patents and patent applications on cognitive and neural systems.

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Preface

Ever since early childhood I have been strangely aware of the special puzzle of self and consciousness; one’s existence as an individual with awareness of one’s own existence here and now, separate from others and the environment. Why do I exist, what am I anyway, could I have been someone else? Later on instead of clarifying the mystery deepened and more questions arose. What is thinking? What happens in the brain when I have a thought or try to solve a problem? What is intelligence, could I become more intelligent? I guess that many people have asked and will be asking these same questions over and over again.

I got access to computers for the first time when I was studying at the Helsinki University of Technology in the late sixties. This opened up a new approach to the question of intelligence. A computer could be programmed to produce results that were achievable earlier only by human mental efforts. Inspired by this possibility I wrote a rather small program that was able to produce short stories, every time different ones. This program utilized simple grammar and a modest vocabulary. Due to the rather clever selection of the overall topic the main shortcoming of these stories was not always apparent — the totally missing plot. How do you program a computer to produce meaningful stories with plots? I soon realized that this was extremely difficult if not impossible with grammar and vocabulary only. Meanings of the words and some real world information would be needed; perhaps the computer would have to posses some kind of ability to understand.

The idea of machine understanding and eventually machine cognition and consciousness haunted me ever since. What is involved in thinking, understanding and consciousness? Could a thinking machine be built? Could I do it? What would it take? But alas, the time was not right, computers were not powerful enough to allow even modest experiments, integrated circuit technology was not advanced enough and most crucially, no employer was ready to finance this kind of research, this was clear without asking.

In the nineties things suddenly changed. I found myself in an avant-garde high tech company research center that wanted to push the limits of leading edge technologies and thus was willing and had the means to support research with applications far in the future. This was Nokia Research Center and I am indebted to the head of the research center, Dr. Juhani Kuusi and my immediate superior, Dr. Hannu Nieminen for the continuing possibility to work in this extremely interesting but also controversial field. During this work I was also able to write my doctoral thesis on the subject at the Helsinki University of Technology under the supervision of professor Raimo Sepponen. I defended this thesis successfully in 1999; my opponents were professor Kimmo Alho of the Helsinki University and professor Igor Aleksander of Imperial College, London. Thank you once more.

In this book I try to summarize the main concepts behind my research; the relevant background information provided by cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience, the philosophy and attempted explanations of consciousness, the outline of my design philosophy for cognitive machines and ultimately an explanation of consciousness within the framework of the proposed cognitive machine architecture.

Philosophers have the luxury of presenting their work as theoretical questions; the elegance of these questions is the hallmark of excellence. We engineers do not have this luxury. Our ideas that first appear as a design philosophy must face the acid test of practicality. My case is not a different one and thus my work includes also actual neuron group microchip development for the eventual implementation of cognitive machines along the lines that are outlined in this book. This work is being done in cooperation with Technical Research Centre of Finland, Centre for Microelectronics and the thanks go to Mr. Arto Rantala there.

I want to express my gratitude to professor Mikko Sams of Helsinki University of Technology, professor Kimmo Alho of University of Helsinki and my colleague Esa Erola for reading the manuscript and giving valuable advice.

Finally I also want to thank my wonderful wife Sinikka for support and patience and my son Pete, without whom my possibilities to observe evolving human cognition would have been very limited.

About this edition

• Publisher: Imprint Academic
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0907845428
• ISBN 13: 9780907845423
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 295