One of these efforts was the EU Funded ICEA Project. The IST 027819 ICEA Integrating Cognition, Emotion and Autonomy was a four-year project, funded by IST Cognitive Systems Unit. The Project was focused on brain-inspired cognitive architectures, robotics and embodied cognition, bringing together cognitive scientists, neuroscientists, psychologists, computational modelers, roboticists and control engineers. The primary aim of the project is to develop a novel cognitive systems architecture integrating cognitive, emotional and bioregulatory (self-maintenance) processes, based on the architecture and physiology of the mammalian brain.

The works but extremely interesting and the teams involved were mostly very active and dedicated to the work. However, the results obtained -basically more elaborated scientific ideas- didn't have a translation in a concrete architectural implementation of a system that could prove the insights. Different systems wer implemented -real, simulated- but the overall picture was a bit lost.

We need stronger tema integration and specially more convergent objectives to get these types of activities produce the expected and potential results. This is not an easy taks however, as the goal of a cognitive psychologist of an industrial control engineer seem so far a part that convergence sounds more lie a myth than a real, strategical possibility.

All this said, something in fully basic: technology departs from science. Mind engineering must depart from mind since and hence, convergence is necessary. This will only happen if we broaden the tagets and pursue a General Theory of Mind not trapped in the details of rat brains or humanoid robot computer-laden hearths.

El propósito del ejercicio era leer un artículo clásico del ámbito de la inteligencia artificial y realizar un breve comentario personal sobre él (Turing - Computing Machinery and Intelligence). Yo esperaba que hubiera alguien que lo leyera con interés y que escribiera un ensayo personal entre un mar de ensayos con comentarios rutinarios sobre el articulo.

Mi sorpresa ha sido lo contrario: los ensayos rutinarios son los menos; estando rodeados de un mar de opiniones, impresiones, juicios, esperanzas y miedos que me han hecho disfrutar de ver tantas mentes jóvenes, tan vivas y tan capaces de pensar por sí mismas. Ha sido sorprendente descubrir, en esta generación acusada de pasividad y desapego- chispas de alegría intelectual.

Mónica, una de mis alumnas, dice,

"Me gustaría ver como un computador puede sorprendernos. No me refiero con ello a los posibles fallos físicos o de software. Hablo de ser capaz de utilizar una metáfora o decirnos que le gustaría poseer la Luna. Y un ordenador no hará eso nunca a no ser que el programador quiera. Un niño querrá cogerla sólo con mirarla. Le parecerá bonita de manera innata, y querrá poseerla." -- Mónica Romero

En estos tiempos de crisis de la ciencia y la tecnología, me han devuelto una cierta esperanza. Estoy seguro de que alguno de ellos construirá El robot que poseyó la Luna. Un gran proyecto y un gran título para una novela de Lem o Heinlein.

The Biologically Inspired Cognitive Architectures 2011 Conference took place at Washington, USA on 4-6 November 2011.

The challenge of creating a real-life computational equivalent of the human mind calls for our joint efforts to better understand at a computational level how natural intelligent systems develop their cognitive and learning functions. BICA conference grew up from a AAAI Fall symposium, focusing on the emergent hot topics in computer, brain and cognitive sciences unified by the challenge of replicating the human mind in a computer.

In this event we presented a general model of emotion based on the interpretation of emotional processes as control reorganisations driven by values.

Concurrent control patterns deployed over neural components.

Adaptive systems use feedback as a key strategy to cope with uncertainty and change in their environments. The information fed back from the sensorimotor loop into the control architecture can be used to change different elements of the controller at four different levels: parameters of the control model, the control model itself, the functional organization of the agent and the functional components of the agent. The complexity of such a space of potential configurations is daunting. The only viable alternative for the agent –in practical, economical, evolutionary terms– is the reduction of the dimensionality of the configuration space.

This reduction is achieved both by functionalisation –or, to be more precise, by interface minimization– and by patterning, i.e. the selection among a predefined set of organisational configurations. This last analysis let us state the central problem of how autonomy emerges from the integration of the cognitive, emotional and autonomic systems in strict functional terms: autonomy is achieved by the closure of functional dependency.

This talk shows a general model of how the emotional biological systems operate following this theoretical analysis and how this model is also of applicability to a wide spectrum of artificial systems.

Get the slides of the talk.