Emotion machine : commonsense thinking, artificial intelligence, and the future of the human mind

Includes bibliography and index

In this book, the author shows why we should expand our ideas about thinking and how thinking itself might change in the future. This book explains how our minds work, how they progress from simple kinds of thought to more complex forms that enable us to reflect on ourselves -- what most people refer to as consciousness, or self-awareness. Unlike other broad theories of the mind, this book proceeds in a step-by-step fashion that draws on detailed and specific examples. It shows that thinking -- even higher-level thinking -- can be broken down into a series of specific actions. From emotional states to goals and attachments and on to consciousness and awareness of self, we can understand the process of thinking in all its intricacy. And once we understand thinking, we can build machines -- artificial intelligence -- that can assist with our thinking, machines that can follow the same thinking patterns that we follow and that can think as we do