Machine Consciousness and Question Answering

Volume 9, Issue 1, February 2024     |     PP. 58-80      |     PDF (325 K)    |     Pub. Date: November 17, 2016
DOI:    404 Downloads     4103 Views  

Author(s)

John Kontos, Athens University, Athens, Hellas

Abstract
In the present paper it is proposed that Machine Consciousness can be implemented by using either Finite State Automata or Production Systems. In both cases a possible behavior that may be characterized as exhibiting consciousness is the generation of an explanation of how it generates its final output. The implementation of Machine Consciousness techniques as applied to the technology of Question Answering is illustrated with our AMYNTAS Deductive Question Answering system. This system is described and it is shown how it generates in addition to an answer to the input question an explanatory report in natural language of the steps followed by the computation for the generation of an answer. Our implemented system is based both on finite state automata and on production systems and generates explanations in two ways while Question Answering from texts. One way is based on the state change path followed by an automaton and the other is based on the chain of productions activated during generating an answer. Our system was evaluated for precision and recall with a biologist as judge for information extraction from biological texts as well as for flexibility by showing that it can easily be adapted to three new domains. In contrast to our AMYNTAS system two prize winning programs at the Turing test Loebner competition that we tested failed to exhibit comparable performance as shown by the dialog trace of the tests presented here.

Keywords
Machine Consciousness , Question Answering , Explanation, Deductive

Cite this paper
John Kontos, Machine Consciousness and Question Answering , SCIREA Journal of Computer. Volume 9, Issue 1, February 2024 | PP. 58-80.

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