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Philosophers have been debating on consciousness for ages. It is such an easy but slippery concept. We know that we are conscious but clearly defining it and, even more difficult, placing boundaries around it is tricky. If one is daydreaming is he conscious? What if he is under the influence of drugs? And what about animals? We may feel that a dog is conscious but is it? We may feel that a spider in not conscious but is it not?
Now a few philosophers and scientists are investigating into AI -artificial intelligence- software asking the question: is it conscious? For the time being the answer is generally “no” but what about the future, including the near future?
The first doubts arose by watching AlphaGo playing against the Go world master. Notice that I wrote “playing”, not “winning”. Yes, AlphaGo won, but experts watching were surprised by the (unexpected) moves it made, more than by the fact that it won. It seemed, at least to some, that AlphaGo had a creative mind allowing it thinking out of the box, which is one trait of consciousness.
An interesting article on Kurzweil discusses the studies of Susan Schneider (a philosopher) and Edwin Turner (an astrophysicist) that area investigating the question: How can we tell if AI software is conscious?
They are proposing a test to check if an AI software is conscious, the ACT: AI Consciousness Test, to see if a synthetic mind has reached the level of self awareness, of consciousness.
The article makes for a good read because it explores what it may mean self awareness for an AI software.
I find the question even more interesting than the possible answer(s) because it shows that we are reaching a point where the boundaries between the physical processing and the mind that we have faced for 2 and a half millennia (in the Western culture and philosophy) are now visible for synthetic minds. Of course, we have not yet completely solved our consciousness, so moving on to solve synthetic consciousness may be moot. Yet, I find it a fascinating question telling us that we are travelling in terra-incognita.
And the trail may bring us further on. What about the meta awareness and meta consciousness that can emerge out of local consciousness in symbiotic autonomous systems? Here you have local consciousness (like our human one interacting with a synthetic consciousness of an AI powered autonomous system) that may fuse into a higher form of consciousness, the one of the symbiotic system.
Do bee swarms, ants colonies (or an ant hill) have a sort of emerging consciousness out of elementary component that are not conscious at all (as long as we can see)? If so, can unconscious IoT when participating in thousands and millions in the creation of a symbiotic autonomous system give rise to an emerging consciousness?
Tough questions indeed, and just asking them is very interesting. This is something the Symbiotic Autonomous System Initiative is looking at and you are most welcome to join us in this exciting debate. Even if we will not reach an answer the quest is worth the while!
