[2] He is the author of Artificial Minds, (MIT Press, 1995)[3] and the developer of IDA and its successor LIDA, both computational implementations of Global Workspace Theory.

He is the founder of the Cognitive Computing Research Group at the University of Memphis.

He then became first a computer scientist and then a cognitive scientist, Franklin has worked for some years on "conscious" software agents, which model the global workspace theory of consciousness.

This work was funded by the United States Navy and has been the subject of numerous papers in scientific journals and conference proceedings.

Franklin has authored or co-authored numerous academic papers as well as a book entitled Artificial Minds published by MIT Press, which was a primary selection of the Library of Science book club, and has been translated into Japanese and Portuguese.