Machine Consciousness (original) (raw)
Related papers
Machine consciousness: Embodiment and imagination
2007
Readers of this Journal are used to considering questions to do with consciousness and subjectivity in humans and other natural creatures. However it is instructive to devote some attention to the realm of artificial subjectivity—as a bare possibility, even if not as a likelihood in the near future.
Progress in machine consciousness
Consciousness and Cognition, 2008
This paper is a review of the work that has been carried out on machine consciousness. A clear overview of this diverse field is achieved by breaking machine consciousness down into four different areas, which are used to understand its aims, discuss its relationship with other subjects and outline the work that has been carried out so far. The criticisms that have been made against machine consciousness are also covered, along with its potential benefits, and the work that has been done on analysing systems for signs of consciousness. Some of the social and ethical issues raised by machine consciousness are examined at the end of the paper.
2018
I have really appreciated the help of Anil Seth, who supported my application for a Turing Fellowship and was very welcoming during my time at the University of Sussex. I am also grateful to the Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science and the Department of Informatics at the University of Sussex for giving me a place to work. I greatly enjoyed conversations about consciousness with my colleagues at Sussex. I would also like to thank Owen Holland, whose CRONOS project started my work on human and machine consciousness, and the reviewers of this book, who had many helpful suggestions. I owe a warm debt of gratitude to my parents, Alejandro and Penny Gamez, who have always given me a great deal of support and encouragement. Contents List of Illustrations 1 List of Illustrations All images are © David Gamez, CC BY 4.0. 2.1. Visual representation of a bubble of perception. 2.2. The presence of an invisible god explains regularities in the visible world. 2.3. Colour illusion. 17 2.4. Primary and secondary qualities. 2.5. The relationship between a bubble of experience and a brain. 21 2.6. Interpretation of physical objects as black boxes. 2.7. The relationship between a bubble of experience and an invisible physical brain. 2.8. The emergence of the concept of consciousness. 3.1. The use of imagination to solve a scientific problem. 3.2. Imagination cannot be used to understand the relationship between consciousness and the invisible physical world. 3.3. Learnt association between consciously experienced brain activity and the sensation of an ice cube. 4.1. Problem of colour inversion. 51 4.2. Some of the definitions and assumptions that are required for scientific experiments on consciousness. 4.3. The relationship between macro-and micro-scale e-causal events. 4.4. Assumptions about the relationship between CC sets, consciousness and first-person reports. 5.1. The measurement of an elephant's height in a scientist's bubble of experience. 5.2. Theory of consciousness (c-theory). 2 Human and Machine Consciousness 7.1. Information c-theory. 97 8.1. Soap bubble computer. 9.1. Testing a c-theory's prediction about a conscious state. 9.2. Testing a c-theory's prediction about a physical state. 9.3. Deduction of the conscious state of a bat. 10.1. Modifications of a bubble of experience. 10.2. A reliable c-theory is used to realize a desired state of consciousness. 11.1. A reliable c-theory is used to build a MC4 machine. 11.2. A reliable c-theory is used to deduce the consciousness of an artificial system.
Consciousness in higher animals, by virtue of its 100 millisecond time constant, is a necessarily greatly simplified and stripped-down version of more complex multiple tunable workspace cognition/regulation dyads like wound healing, immune function, gene expression, institutional function and the like. These more complex dynamic entities emerged through evolutionary exaptation of the inevitable information crosstalk between coresident cognitive modules. In consequence of the debrided nature of consciousness, it should not be difficult to construct a fast, single workspace `conscious machine' that mimics the human tunable neuronal global workspace system. Tied to a 'backbrain' AI that has learned hyperrapid stereotypic pattern responses to some particular set of likely challenges, the result is an elementary 'emotional' conscious machine. A clever designer, however, may want to use available high-speed electronics to mimic the more capable multiple-workspace/workf...
Next-generation approaches to machine consciousness
2005
Abstract A spate of recent international workshops have demonstrated that machine consciousness is a swiftly emerging field of international presence. Independently, there have been several new developments in cognitive science and consciousness studies concerning the nature of experience and how it may best be investigated.
Machine Consciousness, Mind & Consciousness
The problem of consciousness is one of the most important problems in science as well as in philosophy. There are different philosophers and different scientists who define it and explain it differently. As far as our knowledge of consciousness is concerned, 'consciousness' does not admit of a definition in terms of genus and differentia or necessary and sufficient condition. In this paper I shall explore the very idea of machine consciousness. The machine consciousness has offered causal explanation to the 'how' and 'what' of consciousness, but they failed to explain the 'why' of consciousness. Their explanation is based on the ground that consciousness is causally dependent on the material universe and that of all, consciousness phenomena can be explained by mapping the physical universe. Again, this mechanical/epistemological theory of consciousness is essentially committed to scientific world view, which cannot avoid metaphysical implication of consciousness. 12