This book presents a holistic and systems-based approach to Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the Mind-Brain Problem. AI is a multidisciplinary field that combines philosophy, cognitive psychology, neuroscience, mathematics, logic, economics, computer science, and software engineering. This broad perspective can make AI difficult to understand, particularly when addressing the ambitious goal of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).

AGI refers to a hypothetical form of AI capable of human-level cognitive abilities, including understanding, learning, reasoning, problem solving, and applying knowledge across diverse tasks. The book explores how computing hardware, software, and algorithms might contribute to addressing questions about the relationship between mind and brain.

General Systems Theory (GST) and Systems Engineering provide a framework for integrating the many technologies required for AGI. Rather than considering AI technologies as isolated components, the book views AGI as an integrated system in which interconnected capabilities work together toward common objectives.

The proposed AGI architecture brings together key AI technologies, including knowledge representation, perception, natural language processing, generative AI, reasoning, problem solving, and robotics or physical AI. These components operate asynchronously and interact through carefully designed interfaces, reflecting the principles of systems engineering.

The book examines the current state of these technologies and introduces an agent-based “AGI Executive” designed to coordinate them. It also considers how emergent properties arising from their interaction could contribute to unresolved questions concerning consciousness, sentience, machine understanding, and common sense.

The book concludes by exploring the Turing Test, the technological singularity, affective computing, and the future development of AGI.

Wendell Chun has 33 years of aerospace and space robotics/AI experience with Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company in Denver, Colorado, performing a wide and diverse range of engineering disciplines from test engineering and mechanical engineering to systems engineering to software engineering and to conceptual design. Wendell is currently an assistant professor at the University of Denver , teaching for 25 years (including previous roles in teaching at the Colorado School of Mines and the University of Colorado in Denver).  Having worked intimately in the robotics field for over 40 years, he has been a member of a number of world-leading robot research and development projects (rovers, manipulators, autonomous navigation) and he was the Vehicle Systems Management (VSM) software architect on the NASA Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) program, having responsibility for automation & autonomy, health & status, fault detection & isolation, mission planning, resource management, etc.  In his last assignment at Lockheed Martin, he was onsite support at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center on a robotic satellite demonstration on space station, and development work on a future ofa satellite servicing robot (writing a report to the US Congress on the same). 

He is currently a senior advisor to the Office of Environmental Management within the Department of Energy, in its effort to include robotics and artificial intelligence as a promising new technology for maintenance and cleanup of nuclear waste.He was Faculty Director in the University of Denver’s Ritchie School of Engineering and Computer Science, managing the Graduate Program in Systems Engineering.In addition to having expertise in engineering design and systems engineering, he currently teaches a variety of workshops around the world in:

·Mobile Robots (Chair and Editor of the SPIE Mobile Robot Conferences)

·General Robotics and AI (Board of Trustee for AUVSI, Assoc. Editor IEEE ICRA, History Channel’s Modern Marvels)

·Developing a self-driving car for the DOT National Automated Highway System Consortium (NAHSC)

·Drone Designs (sponsored through the AIAA USPC)

·Space Robotics and Artificial Intelligence Workshops (through Launchspace, Inc. and through AIAA conferences)

·Spacecraft, especially satellite servicing and flight hardware development (Invited to the National Smithsonian Air & Space Museum for a robotic demonstration).

He also advises and mentor students on careers in robotics and AI, and governments on the future of technology through being a subject matter expert reviewer and by developing national roadmaps.He has authored over seventy publications (including a chapter in the Handbook of Robotics (a leading academic reference) on Robot Surveillance and Security, and was awarded close to a dozen patents in advanced mobility, stabilizing ships in rough water, and collaborative schemas in aerial-ground robot autonomous navigation.