Performing the Mind: Interiority, Television and Artificial Brains

This chapter addresses the perceived turn to ‘interiority’ in Antonioni’s cinema during the course of the 1960s, often described as an ‘interior neorealism’ or a quintessentially psychological cinema. Such turn, often associated with a breakdown of narrativity and a changed temporal economy, is generally enlisted as another factor fostering increased cinematic purity. Yet I consider how it can be better understood by examining its entanglement with the diffusion of television. In the wake of its mass diffusion in the 1950s, this new medium, transmitting an externally generated ‘flow’ of images inside the home, gave rise to new temporal and viewing economies, as well as preoccupations about its effects on viewers’ interiority: their minds. Starting with a discussion of L’avventura and La notte, this chapter considers how the new temporal aesthetics of Antonioni’s cinema may be both a consequence of and a reaction to the televisual. The discussion then concludes with Il deserto rosso to address how television’s dynamics of interiority and exteriority are in turn connected with the then-emerging fields of cybernetics and early computers, with which Antonioni, like other ‘moderns’, was fascinated.

Mechanism of duration perception in artificial brains suggests new model of attentional entrainment

While cognitive theory has advanced several candidate frameworks to explain attentional entrainment, the neural basis for the temporal allocation of attention is unknown. Here we present a new model of attentional entrainment that is guided by empirical evidence obtained using a cohort of 50 artificial brains. These brains were evolved in silico to perform a duration judgement task similar to one where human subjects perform duration judgements in auditory oddball paradigms1. We found that the artificial brains display psychometric characteristics remarkably similar to those of human listeners, and also exhibit similar patterns of distortions of perception when presented with out-of-rhythm oddballs. A detailed analysis of mechanisms behind the duration distortion in the artificial brains suggests that their attention peaks at the end of the tone, which is inconsistent with previous attentional entrainment models. Instead, our extended model of entrainment emphasises increased attention to those aspects of the stimulus that the brain expects to be highly informative.

MACHINE INTELLIGENCE. ESSAYS ON THE THEORY OF MACHINE LEARNING AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

This book is about the nature of mind, both human and artificial, from the standpoint of the theory of machine learning. It addresses the problem of creating artificial general intelligence. The author shows how one can use the basic mechanisms of our brain to create artificial brains of future robots. How will this ever-stronger artificial intelligence fit into our lives? What awaits us in the next 10-15 years? How can someone who wants to take part in a new scientific revolution, participate in developing a new science of mind?

Discovering Humanoid Robot Consciousness Within Caring Science

Why would humanoid caring robots (HCRs) need consciousness? Because HCRs need to be gentle like human beings. In addition, HCRs need to be trusted by their patients, and have a shared understanding of patients' life experiences, their illnesses, and their treatments. HCRs need to express “competency as caring” to naturally convey their nursing as healing to patients and their families. HCRs should also have self-consciousness and express their emotions without needing inducement by persons' behaviors. Artificial “brains” and artificial consciousness are therefore necessary for HCRs. The purpose of this article was to explore humanoid consciousness and the possibilities of a technologically enhanced future with HCRs as participants in the care of human persons.