AISB'06 Symposium

Integrative Approaches to Machine Consciousness

April 5th-6th 2006

part of

AISB'06: Adaptation in Artificial and Biological Systems

University of Bristol, Bristol, England


Integrative Approaches to Machine Consciousness is a continuation of the 2005 Machine Consciousness Symposium and a part of the AISB'06 Convention.

Program for Wednesday 5th April (provisional)
Program for Thursday 6th April (provisional)
Contacts
Organisers
Program Committee
Outline of Machine Consciousness Symposium
Call for Papers (Closed)

The conference will be taking place in the Wills Memorial Building. The Machine Consciousness Symposium will be located in the Old Council Chamber. All plenary talks will be in the Reception Room and lunch and posters will be in the Great Hall.
Internet facilities will be available in the Merchant Venturers Building next door to the Wills Memorial Building. Delegates will need to obtain a password from the registration desk before using the computers.

Provisional Program

Wednesday 5th April

09.00-9.30 Registration
09:30-9.45 Introduction
(Organisers)
9.45-10.45 Correlation, Explanation and Consciousness
Maggie Boden
10:45-11.30 Towards a Computational Account of Reflexive Consciousness
Murray Shanahan
11:30-12.00 Coffee break
12:00-12.45 The Problem of Inner Speech and its relation to the Organization of Conscious
Experience: a Self-Regulation Model
Rob Clowes
12:45-13.30 Towards Streams of Consciousness; Implementing Inner Speech
Pentti Haikonen
13:30-14.30 Lunch break -- SSAISB AGM
14:30-15.00 Acting and Being Aware
Jacques Penders
15:00-15.30 The Embodied Machine: Autonomy, Imagination and Artificial Agents
Nivedita Gangopadhyay
15:30-16.30 Machine Consciousness and Machine Ethics
Steve Torrance
  Can a Human Have a Relationship with a Robot?
Kathleen Richardson
  Discussants
16:30-17.00 Coffee break
17:00 AISB plenary talk
From Individual to Collective Intelligence
Nigel Franks

Thursday 6th April

09.00-9.30 Registration
09.30-10.30 Invited speaker and AISB plenary talk
Artificial Consciousness and the Simulation of Behaviour
Owen Holland
10.30-11.00 Coffee break
11.00-12.00 How to Experience the World: Some Not So Simple Ways
Aaron Sloman
12.00-12.45 On Architectures for Synthetic Phenomenology
Igor Aleksander and Helen Morton
12.45-13.00 Poster spotlight
13.00-14.00 Lunch break
14.00-14.45 The XML Approach to Synthetic Phenomenology
David Gamez
14.45-15.30 Could a Robot have a Subjective Point of View?
Julian Kiverstein
15:30-16.00 Coffee break
16.00-16.30 Using Emotions on Autonomous Agents. The Role of Happiness, Sadness and Fear
Miguel Salichs and Maria Malfaz
16.30-17.15 Invited speaker
Playing to be Mindful (Remedies for Chronic Boxology)
Ezequiel Di Paolo
17.15-18.00 Debate: Future of Machine Consciousness

Contacts

The co-ordinators for the symposium are Rob Clowes and Mog Stapleton. If you have any questions please email M.L.Stapleton@sussex.ac.uk as Rob will be out of contact in the week preceeding the symposium.


Organisers
  • Rob Clowes
  • Ron Chrisley
  • Steve Torrance

    Program Committee

    Integrative Approaches to Machine Consciousness.

     Machine Consciousness (MC) concerns itself with the study and creation of artefacts which have mental characteristics typically associated with consciousness such as (self-) awareness, emotion, affect, phenomenal states, imagination, etc.

    Recently, developments in AI and robotics, especially through the prisms of behavioural and epigenetic robotics, have stressed the embodied, interactive and developmental nature of intelligent agents which are now regarded by many as essential to engineering human-level intelligence. Some recent work has suggested that giving robots imaginative or simulation capabilities might be a big step towards achieving MC. Other studies have emphasized 'second person' issues such as intersubjectivity and empathy as a substrate for human consciousness. Alongside this, the infant-caregiver relationship has been recognised as essential to the development of consciousness in its specifically human form.

    Bringing these issues to centre stage in the study of artificial consciousness were the focus of last years AISB conference, Next Generation approaches to Machine Consciousness: Imagination, Development, Intersubjectivity, and Embodiment. This conference seeks to continue examination of many of these themes in relation to MC, but with a new focus on attempts to treat the synthesis or fusion of central components of MC in integrated models. We would also be interested in models which show the emergence of, or otherwise treat, processes or systems underlying these core themes.

    The website for the earlier conference at http://www.sussex.ac.uk/cogs/mc, and the online version of the proceedings can be found at and the http://www.aisb.org.uk/publications/proceedings/aisb05/7_MachConsc_Final.pdf. An article introducing and contextualising some of this work can also be found here: ftp://ftp.informatics.sussex.ac.uk/pub/reports/csrp/csrp574.pdf.

    Important Dates (Extended)

    Submission of papers by: Feb 4th 2006

    Notification of decision:  Feb 18th 2006

    Camera ready copies by: Mar 6th 2006

    Call for Papers (closed)

    Submissions are especially invited on the following topics in their relation to MC:

    • Imagination
    • Development
    • Emotion
    • Enactive / Embodied Approaches
    • Heterophenomenology
    • Synthetic Phenomenology
    • Intersubjectivity
    • Narrative / Inner Speech
    • General aspects (techniques, theories, constraints)

    We especially welcome attempts to study the way these different areas might be related.

    Preference will be given to submissions that are:

    • Relevant: closely related to the themes of the symposium
    • Implemented: based on working robotic or other implemented systems
    • Novel: not previously presented elsewhere
    • Integrative: models that examine the integration, or synthesis of core aspects of machine consciousness (especially two or more of the above topics), or their emergence from more basic cognitive functions.

    However, it is not expected that all accepted submissions will meet all four criteria of preference.

    --> Submissions should be in the form of papers 6,000 words (6-8 pages) OR paper abstracts (around 2 pages) based around more speculative ideas. The latter will be invited to give shorter presentations based on 4 page papers which will appear in the final proceedings.  The authors of a selection of the best articles will be invited to submit revised versions to a further publication which is currently being arranged.

    Poster submissions are also welcome for which a short - around a page - abstract should be submitted which will be included in the proceedings.

    Papers should be submitted to robertc (at) sussex.ac.uk

    Formatting

    Papers, paper-abstracts and poster-abstracts should be submitted as PDFs and formatted according to the AISB  instructions which can be found at: http://www.aisb.org.uk/convention/aisb06/ .

    (NB. due to changes in the AISB publication system, papers  can no longer be accepted in the Springer LNCS format as previously advertised. The organisers apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused)

    If the information in this page is viewed through the AISB'06 website you may need to clear your cache to view any updates.


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