"Conscious" Software Agents: Melding Science and Software

Myles Bogner,
"Conscious" Software Research Group,
The University of Memphis and
Senior Software Engineer,
Parikh Advanced Systems

2:00pm Friday March 31, 2000
Lecture Hall III, Administration Building

For the past several years, the "Conscious" Software Research Group at the University of Memphis has been developing "conscious" software agents. "Conscious" software agents are cognitive agents that integrate numerous artificial intelligence mechanisms to implement global workspace theory, a psychological theory of human consciousness. "Conscious" software agents are being developed both to help in the understanding of human cognition and to create "smarter" software. These agents can range in functionality from academic seminar organizers, to navy detailers responsible for naval personnel placement, to personal travel agents.

This talk first gives an overview of the foundations behind "conscious" software agents, including a description of global workspace theory. These agents’ architecture is addressed. "Conscious" Mattie (CMattie) is described, including her natural language perception, associative and episodic memories, emotions, action selection, metacognition, learning, and "consciousness." The "Conscious" Agent Framework (ConAg), a reusable Java based software framework serving as the backbone for these agents, is then detailed. The framework’s primary goals and its package structure are addressed. The design patterns ConAg incorporates are presented as well as the way modules are integrated with the framework. The conclusions drawn from this research are described, as well as a subset of the hypotheses that arise on human cognition.