What is it about?
We embedded a model of consciousness in virtual humans in order to simulate the generation of social behaviours through active inference. Projective geometry was pivotal in integrating perspective taking, social appraisal and the induction of affective and epistemic drives. Virtual humans guessed each other's state of mind by simulating the other's perspective and expectations, to predict its behaviour and adapt theirs accordingly.
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Photo by James A. Molnar on Unsplash
Why is it important?
Our approach allows us to analyse and simulate how non-verbal integrative cognition as featured in human consciousness plays a causal role in the generation of complex behaviours. It is a step toward the implementation of model-based tools to quantitatively study the determinants of adaptive and maladaptive behaviours through dynamic interactions between virtual and real humans in virtual reality.
Perspectives
We hope that this article will contribute to set the stage for a science of consciousness in which mathematical expressions of the phenomenology of consciousness can be connected to the generation of observable behaviours in a meaningful and predictive manner. It brings forth innovative theoretical principles that could be used to design human-inspired and human-oriented artificial systems (from virtual humans to robots), to generate interactions between humans and machines that should feel as natural as interactions between humans.
David Rudrauf
COMUE Universite Paris-Saclay
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Combining the Projective Consciousness Model and Virtual Humans for Immersive Psychological Research: A Proof-of-concept Simulating a ToM Assessment, ACM Transactions on Interactive Intelligent Systems, May 2023, ACM (Association for Computing Machinery),
DOI: 10.1145/3583886.
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Resources
Introducing the PCM: a scientific theory of consciousness
Interview by Phil Halper: What is consciousness? Can science explain consciousness? The worlds most cited neuroscientist Karl Friston and colleagues David Rudrauf and Ken Wiliford explain their new theory of consciousness and its links to AI and VR. According to Wired magazine Friston is "the genius neuroscientist who may hold the keys to true AI" and in this film we will explain how the model may do that and much more.
Modeling the subjective perspective of consciousness and its role in the control of behaviours
An article published by us in the Journal of Theoretical Biology on the Projective Consciousness Model, highlighting: a novel operationalisation of the role of the subjective perspective of consciousness in the control of behaviour, and accounts of appraisal, drive and theory of mind based on that operationalization; a model explaining known psychophysical relationships between appraisal and distance, which generates adaptive and maladaptive behaviours as a function of interpretable parameters.
Contributors
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