By Sean Lorenz, Heather Ames & Massimiliano Versace
After the IEEE Spectrum article on MoNETA was released, a number of websites and blogs picked up the story. Many of the comments on these sites express passionate opinions spanning a wide swath of targets – memristors, Moore’s Law, the state of current AI, among other science-specific inquiries. There is one topic, however, that has made the Slashdot comments section go into the triple digits. Most neuroscientists I know refer to it simply as “the C word”…yep, consciousness. Gasp!
You bring up “the C word” to any tenured neuroscientist and he or she will chuckle, turn on the pedantic tone of voice, and say something like: “No self-respecting scientist can attempt to study things like consciousness. It’s a waste of time; leave those petty issues to the philosophers!” The MoNETA project has opened up a new can of worms with regards to artificial consciousness and rightfully so. The BU team working on MoNETA has also thought extensively about the dreaded C word with relation to neuromorphic chip technology, which is why Max Versace, Heather Ames, and I wrote a paper about it (and later presented our ideas at the 2010 Interdisciplinary Graduate Conference on Consciousness). Here is the original paper, “Consciousness and Neuromorphic Chips: A Case for Embodiment,” in its entirety. If you'd rather watch it in video form, just scroll down to the bottom and your wishes will be granted. Read the rest of this entry »
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