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Detecting Qualia in Natural and Artificial Agents

Roman V. Yampolskiy

arXiv Preprint Archive December 11, 2017 preprint

Study at a glance

AI-extracted from the abstract
Characteristics Theoretical or philosophical paper
Keywords Cs.ai
Key points Proposes that computers can have subjective experiences, making them rudimentarily conscious, and offers a test to confirm such experiences.

Abstract

The Hard Problem of consciousness has been dismissed as an illusion. By showing that computers are capable of experiencing, we show that they are at least rudimentarily conscious with potential to eventually reach superconsciousness. The main contribution of the paper is a test for confirming certain subjective experiences in a tested agent. We follow with analysis of benefits and problems with conscious machines and implications of such capability on future of computing, machine rights and artificial intelligence safety.