An honorary research fellow at Cardiff University's School of Psychology and NESTA Dreamtime fellow, Steve Grand, D.Univ., OBE, has carved himself a reputation at the cutting edge of artificial life. He is Director of Cyberlife Research Ltd. and was formerly Technical Director of Creature Labs, where he was responsible for the architecture and programming of the artificial life game, Creatures. Currently Grand is developing artificial life applications as well as an intelligent living machine that embodies a set of hypotheses about the neurological mechanisms present in various species of animal. He theorizes that every cortical map must be thinking about something all the time, and if there are no signals demanding its attention then the map will generate some itself. He feels this is the explanation for the endless monologue that runs in everyone's head, and the visual day dreaming we do in vacant moments. In his book, Creation: Life and How to Make It, Grand explores what constitutes the conscious essence of existence, what is intelligence, even "how we can make a soul." In Growing Up With Lucy: How to Make an Android in Twenty Easy Steps, he describes his progress building a robot capable of developing a mammal-like intelligence.
On April 9, 2011, Steve received $58,000 in public donations to fund the development of his next artificial life game, Grandoids.
Related Links
- Steve Grand on Machines Like Us
- Steve Grand's Blog
- Steve Grand's Machines Like Us interview
- Steve Grand's Wikipedia page
- Steve Grand's Generation 5 interview
Steve Grand Quotes
Nothing pleases me more than when I stir up moral and ethical questions!
The best change comes about through gentle, sustained pressure from thinking people.
The trouble with the British these days is that they want innovation, but they don't want to change anything to get it.
To me, every level of description in the universe, from atoms through organisms through minds through mobs to societies and beyond, is a real physical form of existence – but an emergent one.
