Preface


The study of consciousness remains a challenge that spans multiple disciplines. Con-
sciousness has a demonstrated, although poorly understood, role in shaping human be-
havior. The processes underpinning consciousness may be crudely replicated to build
better AI systems. Such a “top-down” perspective on AI readily reveals the gaps in
current data-driven approaches and highlights the need for “better AI.” At the same
time, the process of designing AI systems creates an opportunity to better explain bio-
logical consciousness and its importance in system behavior.
   Measuring the components that may lead to consciousness (e.g., modeling and as-
sessing others’ behaviors; calculating utility functions for not only an individual agent,
but also an interacting society of agents) is increasingly important to address concerns
about the surprising capabilities of today’s AI systems.
   The symposium on “Towards Conscious AI Systems” was held at Stanford Univer-
sity, CA, in March 25-27, 2019 as part of AAAI Spring Symposia. It was an excellent
opportunity for researchers considering consciousness as a motivation for “better AI”
to gather, share their recent research, discuss the fundamental scientific obstacles, and
reflect on how it relates to the broader field of artificial intelligence and robotics.
   Research on consciousness and its realization in AI systems motivates research to
account for, with scientific rigor: the motivations of AI systems, the role of sociality
with and between machines, and how to implement machine ethics.
   The meeting offered a platform to discuss the connection between AI systems and
other fields such as psychology, philosophy of mind, ethics, and neuroscience.
   Some of the topics covered by the symposium were:
─ Recent work on conscious AI systems
─ Embodied conscious AI systems
─ Self-reflective higher-order AI systems
─ Ethical issues involving conscious AI systems
─ Trust in conscious AI systems
─ Social robotics and conscious AI systems
─ Consciousness, the theory of mind and artificial emotions
─ The role of episodic memory in conscious AI systems
─ Design strategies versus developmental approaches
─ Symbolic versus deep neural networks in conscious AI systems
─ Measurement of consciousness in AI systems
─ Physicalist models of consciousness
─ Philosophy of mind and machine consciousness
─ Conscious processes and time
─ Implementing neuroscience of consciousness in AI systems
─ Computational models of consciousness
2

   The symposium received about 60 submission. All the submitted papers were peer
reviewed by the organizing committee with the help of external reviewers. The sympo-
sium organizers would like to express their gratitude to all the colleagues for submitting
papers to the symposium as well as to the colleagues that helped them in reviewing and
organizing an attractive symposium.


March 2019

                                                                         Antonio Chella
                                                                          David Gamez
                                                                         Patrick Lincoln
                                                                      Riccardo Manzotti
                                                                        Jonathan Pfautz
                                                                       3


                         Organization



Organizing Committee

Antonio Chella      University of Palermo & ICAR-CNR, Palermo, Italy
David Gamez         Middlesex University, London, UK
Patrick Lincoln     SRI International
Riccardo Manzotti   IULM University, Milan, Italy
Jonathan Pfautz     DARPA
4


Additional reviewers

Igor Aleksander
Agnese Augello
Joscha Bach
Christian Balkenius
Paul Bello
Angelo Cangelosi
Cristiano Castelfranchi
Ron Chrisley
Luisa Damiano
Haris Dindo
Alessandro Di Nuovo
Salvatore Gaglio
Naveen Sundar Govindarajulu
Ignazio Infantino
David Israel
Subhash Kak
Arianna Pipitone
Roberto Pirrone
Valeria Seidita
John Sullins.