Computer Consciousness

June 17, 2004
Edward Fredkin | Distinguished Career Professor at Carnegie Mellon University and a Visiting Professor at MIT

The complexity of modern computation has led to the paradoxical situation where we have ever more unreliable systems built out of ever more reliable hardware. In the real world, users of Windows, MS Office and other software are often plagued by problems that are frustrating and time wasting. Some workers think that the solution is to somehow write better software. Better software is good but Computer Consciousness is a different approach. The idea of CC is to enable the OS to be aware of what the user is trying to do while also being aware of what the computer is doing or not doing. Further, CC could enable the computer to be proactive in solving problems when the computer is not doing what the user wants or when it is doing something that the user doesn’t want.

CC is an AI system that uses technologies similar in complexity to what is found in Computer Chess systems. CC requires modifications to CPU chips and would need to be part of the OS. In addition to making computers less difficult to use, CC can be a key component in other applications: Software Redux and the Programmers Work Station. “Software Redux” is defined as the set of tasks occupying programmers aside from writing original new code based on a natural language (e.g. English) description of what is needed. The PWS is a dedicated hardware–software tool for programmers engaged in Software Redux.

Speaker Details

Ed Fredkin is currently a Distinguished Career Professor at Carnegie Mellon University and a Visiting Professor at MIT.After being a jet fighter pilot in the USAF, Fredkin’s computer career started when the Air Force assigned him to work at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratories. Later Fredkin became a professor at MIT. He spent a year at Caltech as a Fairchild Fellow and was a Professor of Physics at Boston University for 6 years. More recently he has been on the faculty of Carnegie Mellon University.Fredkin has long been broadly interested in computation: the architecture of hardware and software, theoretical models of gates such as Conservative Logic and the Billiard Ball Model. Fredkin and his students did pioneering work on cellular automata and reversible computing. He has also been involved in computer chess and other areas of AI research. He has worked at the intersection of theoretical issues in the physics of computation and computational models of physics. He recently developed Salt, a model of computation using basic physical properties of matter.