From the 22rd of May to the 27th of May 2023, our consortion members Indeep AI and École Normale Supérieure, attended The Science of Consciousness conference in Taormina, Italy as part of our ground breaking project, ASTOUND.

Our mission at Astound is to push the boundaries of artificial intelligence and lay the groundwork for the development of consciousness within AI systems. Through knowledge-sharing, idea exchange, and collaboration with some of the brightest minds in the scientific community, our team strove to foster innovation and gain deeper insights into the enigmatic nature of consciousness.

Furthermore, our very own Aïda Elamrani of École Normale Supérieure gave a talk during the conference on “To What Extent can Machines be Conscious”. The talk discussed how experts disagree on the possibility of mechanically implementing consciousness, with challenges involving phenomenalism, physicalism, computation, and information. A compromise is possible by viewing consciousness as a virtual reality implemented through computational mechanisms, but this raises further research questions regarding different interpretations of information. Achieving machine consciousness depends on the chosen interpretation.

Stay tuned for more updates as we take the lead in making significant progress towards developing consciousness in artificial intelligence.