Wed 23rd of September Can we Build a Conscious Machine?

Abstract
There has been a great deal of speculation about conscious robots and the possibility that we could upload our consciousness into a computer. Many films and plays have been made about this topic – for example, Ex Machina, Chappie, Transcendence and The Hard Problem. This talk will start with some background information about the attempts that have been made to build conscious machines. I will then argue that machine consciousness is best understood through its relationship to human consciousness. If we can find out what is linked to consciousness in the human brain, we can use this knowledge to make reliable predictions about the consciousness of computers and build machines that are really conscious.

Biography
David Gamez holds PhDs in both philosophy and computer science. His cross-disciplinary research uses philosophy and neural modelling to explore how we can develop scientific theories of consciousness. Between 2009 and 2012 he was at Imperial College London, where he worked on brain-inspired neural networks and robotics and investigated new algorithms for making predictions about consciousness. From 2012-15 he was supported by a Turing Fellowship at the Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science, University of Sussex. His publications include a co-edited book, What Philosophy Is, a sole-author book on the limits of knowledge, What We Can Never Know, and he has just completed a book on human and machine consciousnesses.