On January 18th, 2023 we had our second meeting to discuss and do brainstorming on the design of the AST architecture and existing datasets that can be used for a proof of concept of our conscious chatbot. The total number of attendees was 23 coming from all the partners in the project. The meeting started at 13:30 and finished at 17:00.

The agenda started with some administrative topics presented by Dr. Giorgos Kontaxakis (UPM), followed by updates on the constitution of the Ethics Advisory Board by Dr. Aïda Elamrani (ENS), and ideas for consciousness evaluation by Dr. Cristina Becchio (UKE). Finally, the announcement of our first top journal accepted paper supported by the project was given by Dr. Luis Fernando D’Haro (UPM). The full information about the paper will be expanded in a following post.

Then, the two main sections of the meeting were carried out:

• Brainstorming on defining the AST architecture, and
• Defining the targeted domains and tasks for the final chatbot.

The first section was led by Dr. Guido Manzi (Alien Technology Transfer), where his team proposed an AST architecture that was found to be in line with other modules developed by the other partners along the project and which can be combined with existing SotA models. The proposed architecture was discussed and improvements were provided by the different attendees. During the presentation Dr. Michael Grazianno, the proposer of the AST theory of the consciousness, also provided his feedback on the connection between the theory and the proposed implementation.

The second section was led by Dr. Fernando Fernández (UPM) where different datasets and desired characteristics of the final chatbot and domain were described. After the debate, up to four existing datasets were pointed as highly relevant for the targeted domain and expected capabilities of the chatbot. In future meetings we will address the needs for adapting the selected datasets to the requirements of the final chatbot.

The next meeting will be held during February 2023 with the idea of refining even more the proposed AST architecture and provide some more details about the datasets and target domain for the chatbot. Stay tuned for next news about our project.