The philosophical issues of the idea of conscious machines

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.

Study at a glance

Abstract

The study outlines the existing and potential philosophical issues of the idea of conscious machines originated from the development of artificial consciousness within the framework of contemporary research of artificial intelligence and cognitive robotics. The outline shows that the idea of conscious machines is concerned with two big philosophical issues. The first philosophical issue is a definition of consciousness, taking into account the selection of a set of objects that can have consciousness (human being, living being or machine), the typology of consciousness, the clarifying of the nature of consciousness' carriers and the relationship between consciousness and its environment (including social and cultural) and the relationship between consciousness and language, in order to create an artificial consciousness within a machine, making that machine conscious. The second philosophical issue is a clarification whether only artificially created machines can be conscious machines, or cyborgizated (engineered) human beings also can be considered of conscious machines. These philosophical issues show that there can be two ways to create conscious machines: 1) the creating of artificial consciousness within artificially created machine; and 2) the cyborgization of human being, transforming it into artificially created machine possessed natural consciousness (or even possessed consciousness artificially transformed from natural into artificial).