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lectures > lectures spring 2000

How to Build a Mind

Speaker: Professor Igor Aleksander
13 May 2000

The idea of a conscious machine seems absurd and almost heretical, and its advocates are often accused of sensationalism, arrogance or philosophical ignorance. Part of the problem is that consciousness continues to be ill-defined and many people argue that it remains beyond the remit of science and in the realm of philosophical speculation. The speaker shows how the arguments unravel for a general audience and provides a rigorous definition of consciousness. He gives a cultural history of the field of artificial consciousness and an account of the latest work in that field.

Igor Aleksander has been studying artificial neural systems for more than 30 years and is currently Professor of Neural Engineering Systems at Imperial College in London, where he lives.