This study explores the potential for artificial agents to develop core consciousness, as proposed by Antonio Damasio's theory of consciousness. According to Damasio, the emergence of core consciousness relies on the integration of a self model, informed by representations of emotions and feelings, and a world model. We hypothesize that an artificial agent, trained via reinforcement learning...
The question of whether artificial beings or machines could become self-aware or conscious has been a philosophical question for centuries. The main problem is that self-awareness cannot be observed from an outside perspective and the distinction of being really self-aware or merely a clever imitation cannot be answered without access to knowledge about the mechanism's inner workings. We...