Sustainable development strategies for product provision and manufacturing approaches

Manufacturing firms are under many pressures both financially and competitive which focus attention on the performance of their manufacturing processes. In this paper the opportunities for improving the environmental impact of products within the constraints of existing manufacturing infrastructure are examined. Approaches which support sustainability in two aspects are proposed, firstly, the provision of products to the users in ways which extend the product life and secondly, manufacturing approaches which reduce resource usage. The provision and manufacture of products in ways that are truly sustainable are inhibited by three issues: firstly, decisions are predominantly made solely from the perspective of the “vendor” (and do not consider the wider perspective); secondly, that generally the scope of business planning is still rooted in production/manufacturing costs (and not consumption costs) and thirdly, the current performance measures (e.g. KPIs) mainly focus on profitability. The rationale for this conference paper is the argument that there is a need to raise the awareness during the earliest stages of business planning that there may be alternative approaches which are more sustainable. The concepts presented here will underpin further research into performance measures which encompass sustainability and resulting business planning implications

The cognitive development of machine consciousness implementations

The progress in the machine consciousness research fiel has to be assessed in terms of the features demonstrated by the new models and implementations currently being designed. In this paper, we focus on the functional aspects of consciousness and propose the application of a revision of ConsScale a biologically inspired scale for measuring cognitive development in artificial agents in order to assess the cognitive capabilities of machine consciousness implementations. We argue that the progress in the implementation of consciousness in artificial agents can be assessed by looking at how key cognitive abilities associated to consciousness are integrated within artificial systems. Specifically, we characterize ConsScale as a partially ordered set and propose a particular dependency hierarchy for cognitive skills. Associated to that hierarchy a graphical representation of the cognitive profile of an artificial agent is presented as a helpful analytic tool. The proposed evaluation schema is discussed and applied to a number of significant machine consciousness models and implementations. Finally, the possibility of generating qualia and phenomenological states in machines is discussed in the context of the proposed analysisThis work has been supported by the grant CICYT TRA 2007 67374 C02 0

Organizational Change Perspectives on Software Process Improvement

Many software organizations have engaged in Software Process Improvement (SPI) and experienced the challenges related to managing such complex organizational change efforts. As a result, there is an increasing body of research investigating change management in SPI. To provide an overview of what we know and don’t know about SPI as organizational change, this paper addresses the following question: What are the dominant perspectives on SPI as organizational change in the literature and how is this knowledge presented and published? All journals on the AIS ranking list were screened to identify relevant articles and Gareth Morgan’s organizational metaphors (1996) were used to analyze this literature considering the following dimensions of each article: organizational perspective (metaphor), knowledge orientation (normative versus descriptive), theoretical emphasis (high versus low), main audience (practitioner versus academic), geographical origin (Scandinavia, the Americas, Europe, or the Asia-Pacific), and publication level (high versus low ranked journal). The review demonstrates that the literature on SPI as organizational change is firmly grounded in both theory and practice, and Scandinavia and the Americas are the main contributors to this research. The distribution of articles across Morgan’s metaphors is uneven and reveals knowledge gaps that present new avenues for research. The current literature offers important insights into organizational change in SPI from machine, organism, and brain perspectives. Practitioners may use these articles as a guide to SPI insights relevant to their improvement initiatives. In contrast, the impact of culture, dominance, psychic prison, flux and transformation, and politics in SPI have only received scant attention. We argue that these perspectives offer important insights into the challenges involved in managing change in SPI. Researchers are therefore advised to engage in new SPI research based on one or more of these perspectives. Overall, the paper provides a roadmap to help identify insights and specific articles related to SPI as organizational change.Software Process Improvement; Organizational Change; Organizational Metaphors; Images of Organization; Literature Review

Strategies for measuring machine consciousness

The accurate measurement of the level of consciousness of a creature remains a major scientific challenge, nevertheless a number of new accounts that attempt to address this problem have been proposed recently. In this paper we analyze the principles of these new measures of consciousness along with other classical approaches focusing on their applicability to Machine Consciousness (MC). Furthermore, we propose a set of requirements of what we think a suitable measure for MC should be, discussing the associated theoretical and practical issues. Using the proposed requirements as a framework for the design of an integrative measure of consciousness, we explore the possibility of designing such a measure in the context of current state of the art in consciousness studies.This work has been supported by the Grant CICYTTRA-2007-67374-C02-02

Assessing and characterizing the cognitive power of machine consciousness implementations

Proceeding of: AAAI 2009 Biologically Inspired Cognitive Architectures-II (BICA-2009). Technical Report FS-09-01. Washington, D.C. EE.UU, 5-7 Noviembre 2009.Many aspects can be taken into account in order to assess the power and potential of a cognitive architecture. In this paper we argue that ConsScale, a cognitive scale inspired on the development of consciousness, can be used to characterize and evaluate cognitive architectures from the point of view of the effective integration of their cognitive functionalities. Additionally, a graphical characterization of the cognitive power of artificial agents is proposed as a helpful tool for the analysis and comparison of Machine Consciousness implementations. This is illustrated with the application of the scale to a particular problem domain in the context of video game synthetic bots.This research has been supported by the Spanish Ministry of Education under CICYT grant TRA2007-67374-C02-02.Publicad

On the practical nature of artificial qualia

Proceeding of: 2010 Annual Convention of the Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of Behaviour (AISB 2010), Leicester, UK, 29 March - 1 April, 2010.Can machines ever have qualia? Can we build robots with inner worlds of subjective experience? Will qualia experienced by robots be comparable to subjective human experience? Is the young field of Machine Consciousness (MC) ready to answer these questions? In this paper, rather than trying to answer these questions directly, we argue that a formal definition, or at least a functional characterization, of artificial qualia is required in order to establish valid engineering principles for synthetic phenomenology (SP). Understanding what might be the differences, if any, between natural and artificial qualia is one of the first questions to be answered. Furthermore, if an interim and less ambitious definition of artificial qualia can be outlined, the corresponding model can be implemented and used to shed some light on the very nature of consciousness.1In this work we explore current trends in MC and SP from the perspective of artificial qualia, attempting to identify key features that could contribute to a practical characterization of this concept. We focus specifically on potential implementations of artificial qualia as a means to provide a new interdisciplinary tool for research on natural and artificial cognition.This work was supported in part by the Spanish Ministry of Education under CICYT grant TRA2007-67374-C02-02.Publicad

European NCAP Program Developments to Address Driver Distraction, Drowsiness and Sudden Sickness

Driver distraction and drowsiness remain significant contributors to death and serious injury on our roads and are long standing issues in road safety strategies around the world. With developments in automotive technology, including driver monitoring, there are now more options available for automotive manufactures to mitigate risks associated with driver state. Such developments in Occupant Status Monitoring (OSM) are being incorporated into the European New Car Assessment Programme (Euro NCAP) Safety Assist protocols. The requirements for OSM technologies are discussed along twodimensions: detection difficulty and behavioral complexity. More capable solutions will be able to provide higher levels of system availability, being the proportion of time a system could provide protection to the driver, and will be able to capture a greater proportion of complex real-word driver behavior. The testing approach could initially propose testing using both a dossier of evidence provided by the Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) alongside selected use of track testing. More capable systems will not rely only on warning strategies but will also include intervention strategies when a driver is not attentive. The roadmap for future OSM protocol development could consider a range of known and emerging safety risks including driving while intoxicated by alcohol or drugs, cognitive distraction, and the driver engagement requirements for supervisio

Sharpening the Cutting Edge: Corporate Action for a Strong, Low-Carbon Economy

Outlines lessons learned from early efforts to create a low-carbon economy, current and emerging best practices, and next steps, including climate change metrics, greenhouse gas reporting, effective climate policy, and long-term investment choices