How can a thinking mind be produced through interactions between a complex arrangement of components? Natural intelligence, as observed in humans and animals, is the result of multiple systems and subsystems, implementing a complex pattern of information flow and controlled interaction. I aim to understand how the architectural aspects of a thinkning mind can be implemented in an artificial substrate. The aim is to produce an artificial general intelligence.

I strive to build larger, more integrated and complete systems than achieved to date. My approach follows two main traditions in systems thinking. On the one hand is a rather familiar modular decomposition from cognitive science and software development. Modularization (object-orientation being one flavor) is the most powerful known method to construct complex systems. Unfortunately this method has its limitations. As the proponents of the holistic systems approach have pointed out, people like as Varela, Maturana, Simon and others, many complex systems have the elusive property that local interactions between their parts are not sufficient to explain, understand or predict the operation of the whole system of which they are a part. Software methodologies employing traditional modular decomposition will not be sufficient to allow us to construct such systems in the lab — so we are forced to look towards methodologies inspired by studies of self-organization and meta-control to achieve the important goal of building generally intelligent systems. This topic is the subject of my 2009 AAAI Fall Symposium on Biologically-Inspired Cognitive Architectures Keynote Speech.

Selected Projects

Constructivist A.I.

A.I. research focusing on or using principles of self-organization in the development, implementation or construction of A.I. systems is called "constructivist A.I.". As it is becoming clear that manual construction process employed in most of software development wil not be sufficient to construct the kinds of complex architectures that we require for general intelligence, our attention must shift towards using techniques that allow systems to acquire their own knowledge and grow on their own. Only with such principles in hand will we see systems that can have a tight architecture-wide integration of learning, attention, analogy making and system growth. Our recently-awarded HUMANOBS grant from the EU will enable us to take notable steps in this direction.

Constructionist A.I.

Constructionist A.I. (not to be confused with constructivist A.I. - see above) is a moniker given to the bulk of A.I. research being performed around the world, where traditional software development methods form the basis of the work. In this tradition we have developed the Constructionist Design Methodology (CDM), which eases the creation of modular, complex machines that incorporate some aspects of a full perception-action loop. We have used it on the HONDA Asimo humanoid robot and Mirage autonomus virtual agent [ watch movie]. Mirage inhabits an augmented reality; this complex system of integrated heterogeneous components was designed and implemented in as little as 2 mind-months using the CDM. We think it's directly due to the application of CDM in the project [published in A.I. Magazine, winter 2004]. We have also used CDM for a live performance of the Robot Opera in Reykjavik, 2006 [ watch movie] and 2007. One of our main and ongoing projects using the CDM is an artificial radio show host that can conduct a full radio program completely autonomously, including interview listeners over the phone.

MINDMAKERS.ORG. The mission of MINDMAKERS.ORG is to further development of large integrated artificial intelligence systems, with a strong focus on real-time human-humanoid interaction and collaboration. The main forum for Constructionist AI. Please consider joining!

OpenAIR is a routing and communication protocol based on a publish-subscribe architecture. It is intended to be the "glue" that allows numerous AI researchers to share code more effectively — "AIR to share". Serving essentially as the "post office and mail delivery system" for distributed, multi-module systems, OpenAIR provides the foundation upon which subsequent markup languages and semantics can be based, for e.g. gesture recognition and generation, motor control, computer vision, hardware-software interfacing, to name a few.