Since 1950s, artificial intelligence (AI) has become a dream of many intelligent researchers. In the 1980s, Japan launched the 5th generation computer project, expecting to create intelligence in computers, but failed. Noting that the logic approach alone is not enough, soft computing (e.g. neuro-computing, fuzzy logic and evolutionary computation) became another main stream in the early 1990s. After another 2 decades, however, we have not got any system that is as intelligent as a human, from the sense of "over-all performance". The question is that what we are expecting from AI? If we are expecting an intelligent being that is as clever as or cleverer than us, it may take another century or longer to reach the goal. Instead of creating intelligence directly, we may try to create "awareness" first, and then create intelligence "step-by-step". From an engineering point of view, we may define awareness as a capability to detect something important without complete understanding. Intuitively, creating awareness should be easier than creating intelligence. However, this does not mean that awareness is less important. A low level aware system may not be clever enough to provide understandable knowledge about the events; it nevertheless can tell us something we are not aware of, or provide important information fosr high level aware systems to make understandable decisions. This talk is a brief introduction to awareness computing. It is not a survey of existing results. Rather, I will try to look at the problem from a new perspective, try to clarify some related terminologies and propose some problems to solve for creating intelligence through awareness computing.
