Lenore Blum | Manuel Blum
School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University


23 de Outubro
Distinguished Lecture CMU Portugal | Instituto Superior Técnico | Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa | Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia da Universidade Nova de Lisboa

25 de Outubro
Distinguished Lecture CMU Portugal | Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade do Porto | Escola de Engenharia da Universidade do Minho | Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto |  Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia da Universidade de Coimbra Universidade de Aveiro |

Thanks to major advances in cognitive neuroscience, the world is on the brink of a scientific understanding of how the brain achieves consciousness.  In 1988, cognitive neuroscientist Bernard Baars’ proposed a Global Workspace Model (GWM) of the brain, sketched its computer architecture, and outlined its implications for understanding consciousness. In 1990, the invention of fMRI enabled us to witness brain functioning in real time.  As a consequence, the quest to understand consciousness, once the purview of philosophers and theologians, is now actively pursued also by scientists and mathematicians.

This talk discusses consciousness from the perspective of theoretical computer science. Its major contribution lies in the precise formal definition of a Conscious Turing Machine (CTM), also called Conscious AI. The CTM is defined in the spirit of Alan Turing’s simple yet powerful definition of a computing machine, the Turing Machine (TM), as a way to formalize rigorously, explicitly, mathematically and simply Baars’ GWM.

The reasonableness of definitions of consciousness in the CTM can be judged by how well its concepts agree with the commonly agreed-upon intuitive concepts of human consciousness.

This is joint work of  Manuel, Lenore and Avrim Blum.

Registration is free.