A New ROBOMINERS movie

Our dissemination team has prepared another movie describing some robotics activities inside the ROBOMINERS Horizon 2020 project. In the movie we see activity at UPM (Spain), TalTech (Estonia), and TAU (Finland) in some of the themes related to ROBOMINERS.

We at UPM are involed in two main activities: the implementation of the RM2 robot miner pratotype and the construction of the high-level autonomy software.

Journal of Artificial Intelligence and Consciousness

The Journal of Artificial Intelligence and Consciousness (JAIC) will offer a multidisciplinary platform to discuss AI and consciousness in the light of robotics and artificial systems, computational science, psychology, philosophy of mind, ethics, and neuroscience.

The aims and scope of the journal are:

  • articles that take inspiration from biological consciousness and/or that explore theoretical issues of consciousness to build robots and AI systems that show forms of functional consciousness;
  • articles that employ robots and AI systems as tools to model and better understand biological mechanisms of consciousness;
  • articles that discuss ethical problems emerging or uncovered through the overlap of AI and consciousness, and that investigate the ethical and societal impact of consciousness and the limits of it, and
  • to pursue the hybridization between the field of AI and the field of consciousness studies.

Go to JAIC journal website.

DARPA Workshop on Self-Aware Machines

In 2004, DARPA and John McCarthy organised a Workshop on Self-Aware Computing Systems because the topic of artificial self-awareness was gaining momentum. It was a workshop by invitation at Washington D.C. Most participants came from USA, but there were two from Europe: Aaron Sloman from UK and Ricardo Sanz from Spain.

Sanz, Hayes, Minsky at DARPA Workshop on Self-Aware Computing Systems.

These were the thirty-three participants in the workshop:

Aaron SlomanEyal AmirPush Singh
Bernard BaarsJames Van OverscheldeRaghu Ramakrishnan
Brian WilliamsJohn McCarthyRicardo Sanz
Greg SullivanKen ForbusRichard Scherl
Danny BobrowTom HinrichsRichard Gabriel
Markus FromhertzLen SchubertRichard Thomason
Deborah McGuinnessLokendra ShastriRobert Stroud
Drew McDermottMichael CoxSheila McIlraith
Don PerlisMichael WhitbrockStan Franklin
Mike AndersonMike AndersonStuart Shapiro
Tim OatesOwen HollandYaron Shlomi
DARPA Worksop participants.

During three days we discussed the possibilities and approaches to machine self-awareness, within the specific pespective of artificial intelligence. Twenty years after, the discussion remains at the same point. Not much advance has been produced

Maybe the problem is too difficult for human minds.

Premio Innovatech 2020 a la tecnología inTelos

El equipo UPM ASLab + TU Delft ha obtenido el Primer Premio en el concurso UPM_innovatech 2T Challenge de 2020.

Esta es una iniciativa de desafío competitivo para investigadores, pionera en España, que busca reconocer y premiar las tecnologías más innovadoras de la Universidad Politécnica de Madrid y contribuir a su desarrollo y comercialización.

La tecnología presentada por el equipo ASLab+TUDelft, InTelos, es el resultado de años de investigación en sistemas auto-conscientes en ASLab. Esta es una tecnología que permite emplear el conocimiento de ingeniería para dotar al sistema de capacidades cognitivas de auto-percepción y control que le dotan de una mayor adaptabilidad, resiliencia y autonomía. Es una tecnología resultante del proyecto ASys.

Singularidad Tecnológica

Evento sobre la Singularidad Tecnológica organizado por la Sección de Pensamiento Marginal del Ateneo de Madrid en 2021.

PRESENTA: Brígida de Fez Algarra
INTRODUCE: José Luis Cordeiro
MODERA: Lola Marcos

PONENTES:
Antonio Miguel Carmona, PhD (Economía) Profesor de Economía, Oficial del Ejército del Aire (RV) y Político
Gabriel Vázquez Torres, Ingeniero Informático, MSc (c) Experto en Data Science e Inteligencia Artificial
Ricardo Sanz, PhD (Ingeniería) Profesor e Investigador de la Universidad Politécnica de Madrid

Lógica y Terminators

La inteligencia artificial es una tecnología muy relevante y de gran impacto potencial en la industria y la sociedad. En esta charla se comentaron algunos de los principales temas que sirvieron de base para un debate con los futuros ingenieros industriales de UPM ETSII. Una conferencia pronunciada dentro del ciclo de conferencias Hazte Industrial.

La versión PDF de las diapositivas de la charla se puede descargar desde aquí.

It has always been models

There is a relatively recent boom on model-based X. Model-based development, model-based design, model-based systems engineering, …

In all the domains of engineering, it looks like we have just discovered the use of models to support our work. But this is, obviously, false. It has always been models. All around. All the time.

When an engineer-to-be starts his studies, the first he learns is physics and mathematics: i.e. how to model reality and the language to build the model. In recent parlance we would say that math is just a metamodel of reality. A model of the models that we use to capture the knowledge we have about an extant system or the ideas we have about a system to be engineered.

The distinction between knowledge and ideas may seem relevant but it is not so much. They’re all about mental content; that may or may not be related or co-related to some reality out there. Both knowledge and ideas are models of realities-that-are or realities-to-be that are of relevance to us or our stakeholders.

It has always been models. In our minds and in the collaborative processes that we use to engineer our systems. Model-based X is not new. It is just good, old-fashioned engineering.