The Awakening of Conscious Bots

Inside the Mind of the 2K BotPrize 2010 Winner

AIGameDev.com features an in-depth article about CC-Bot2, the winning entry (Conscious-Robots team) of this year's 2K BotPrize competition at CIG.

Related links:

•  The Awakening of Conscious Bots at AIGameDev.
•  Conscious-Robots team is the 2K BotPrize 2010 winner.
•  www.botprize.org.

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A Scale for Measuring Machine Consciousness

ConsScale is a tool for assessing the functional level of consciousness of a creature. It has been specifically designed for the evaluation of Machine Consciousness implementations.

Now a ConsScale microsite is available where you can explore the conceptual levels of consciousness defined in the scale, learn how agents can also be rated using a quantitative score, and use the online calculator to rate your own implementations:

http://conscious-robots.com/consscale/

ConsScale is a framework for characterizing the cognitive power of a creature. ConsScale includes the definition of an ordered list of cognitive levels arranged across a developmental path. The arrangement of the levels is inspired on the ontogeny and phylogeny of consciousness in biological organisms.
  The basic assumption is that there exist different kinds of minds, and they can be characterized in terms of ConsScale criteria. Using ConsScale, characterization and assessment of consciousness can be performed using three related tools:
 
- the ConsScale conceptual levels of consciousness (levels),
- the CQS (ConsScale Quantitative Score) (CQS), and
- the ConsScale radar graph representation (Calculator).
 
In order to assess the level of artificial consciousness of an agent using ConsScale, its architectural components have to be identified and its cognitive skills tested. Using this information as input, the scale can be used to obtain both a qualitative and a quantitative measure of consciousness:

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The Development and Analysis of Conscious Machines

"The Development and Analysis of Conscious Machines" is the title of the PhD thesis written and developed by David Gamez at the Department of Computing and Electronic Systems, University of Essex.

This thesis can be viewed and downloaded from http://www.davidgamez.eu/mc-thesis/, a site which also contains data files, source code, and supporting materials. Resources you shouldn't miss in you are interested in Machine Consciousness and Synthetic Phenomenology.

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AI Bots in Video Games and Virtual Worlds

Usually when we talk about situated agents as the target of the research in Artificial Intelligence or Machine Consciousness, we think about physical agents, like typical autonomous robots. One of the reasons why we tend to use physical robots as part of our experimental setup is because we believe embodiment plays a key role both in intelligence and consciousness.

AI Bots in a video game

Because of the limitations in cost and time, during development phases we are used to using simulation tools in order to quickly test our hypotheses. However, the final target is always the physical robot and its application into the real world. At least that is the obvious conclusion in the field of robotics.

But, what about final AI applications that only live within virtual worlds? Do they deserve less attention from AI research fields? In recent years we are seeing a growing interest in applications which reside entirely within virtual worlds and video games. Some relevant examples are Second Life and World of Warcraft. I personally believe the success of these products is rooted in the fact that they provide new ways of interaction between humans (players, colleagues, partners, etc.). We currently lack the same level and richness of interaction when it comes to AI bots (we use the term AI bot to refer to autonomous virtual agents that are controlled by an AI program).

From my point of view, there is no doubt that AI bots are a new example of situated agents. Whether they can be considered embodied or not is another question. Anyhow, we could say that they are embodied in terms of the simulated physical laws enforced by the engine which generates the corresponding virtual world or video game.

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Lifenaut Project. Eternalizing Consciousness using a virtual avatar

A talk with Nick Mayer, Manager of Cyberbiological Systems at Terasem Movement Foundation.

The goal of the Lifenaut Project is to create an automated, user-friendly, and web accessible system that allows individuals around the globe to create significantly detailed personality archives.

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Feelix Growing (FEEL, Interact, eXpress: a Global appRoach to develOpment With INterdisciplinary Grounding) is a project funded by the European Commission under contract FP6 IST-045169. It was launched in December 2006 and it is planned to end by May 2010. Project budget is 2.5 million Euro.

The members of the consortium are the University of hertfordshire, the French National Centre of Scientific Research (CNRS), the Neurocybernetics Team (ETIS), the Learning Algoriths and Systems Laboratory at EPFL, University of Portsmouth, ICCS at the University of Athens, Entertainment Robotics, and Aldebaran Robotics.

The overall goal of the project is to advance the field of socially situated robots, achieving realistic robotics platforms that can be trully integrated in real everyday life environments.

• Feelix Growing Homepage: http://www.feelix-growing.org

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