The philosophical issues of the idea of conscious machines
Cхід September 27, 2018 Konstantin Rayhert
The idea of conscious machines, emerging from artificial intelligence and cognitive robotics research, raises two major philosophical issues. First, defining consciousness requires deciding which entities can possess it (humans, living beings, or machines), classifying types of consciousness, understanding the nature of its carriers, and examining consciousness's relationships with its environment and language, all to engineer artificial consciousness in a machine. Second, it must be clarified whether only artificially created machines can be conscious machines, or whether cyborgized humans—those engineered with technology—also count. These issues suggest two paths to conscious machines: building artificial consciousness in an artificial machine, or cyborgizing a human to transform natural consciousness into artificial.