The Artificial Prefrontal Cortex: Artificial Consciousness

The purpose of this paper is to describe a new neural framework for Artificially Intelligent systems, the Artificial Cognitive Neural Framework (ACNF), which allows for “conscious” software agents within the AI processing environment. “Conscious” software agents are autonomous agents that range in functionality and are situated in the processing environment. They sense the environment and act on it over time, in pursuit of their own agenda, based on their evolving constraints. As they evolve it is possible for them to change what they sense at a later time. These “conscious” agents are also “cognitive” agents, in that they are equipped with constructs for concept formation, consciousness, basic emotions, and short & long-term memories [14]. The long-term memories provide identification, recognition and categorization functions, as well as identification of feelings [21]. The short-term memories provide preconscious buffers as a workspace for internal activities. A transient episodic memory is also provided as a contentaddressable associative memory with a moderately fast decay rate. This provides the architectural framework for an Artificial Prefrontal Cortex (APC), which provides cognitive intelligence for AI processing systems and allows for rapid analysis, reasoning, and reporting capabilities. The APC facilitates information, intelligence, and memory integration and allows faster accommodation and delivery of knowledge and knowledge characteristics across the