Gerald Edelman's Radical Ideas About Mind, Memory, and Machines

The neurologist Gerald Edelman described an undisclosed plan in 2006 for developing what he dubbed a Conscious Artifact, a synthetic system with biological underpinnings that might be aware. This research reconstructs that roadmap and revisits the conversations that led to it, based on notes from a crucial meeting at The Neurosciences Institute in La Jolla. These concepts are still remarkably relevant fifteen years later, connecting robots, AI, and neuroscience in the ongoing effort to comprehend—and possibly recreate—consciousness itself.