Examining Some Serious Challenges and Possibility of AI Emulating Human Emotions, Consciousness, Understanding and 'Self'

Emulating subjective experience, emotions, consciousness, self-awareness, and personality in AI systems presents profound challenges due to the vast variety of human feelings, processes of future and fringe consciousness, and the evolution of self and personality. The work also discusses the possibility of emulating hermeneutic ambiguity (ṣan‘at-e ihām) in Urdu, Persian, Arabic, Hindi, and Punjabi poetry, highlighting the difficulty of replicating such nuanced human understanding. It argues that comprehending and incorporating these aspects of consciousness and self is necessary for designing AI systems that can parallel human mental functioning.

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Abstract

This research falls in the ambit of ‘AI and Philosophy’. It explores why emulating the complex processes of subjective experience, emotions, consciousness, self-awareness, and the human personality, will be a huge challenge for AI research. It touches upon some finer aspects, like the huge variety of human emotions and feelings, processes of future and fringe consciousness, and the evolution of self-awareness and complex human self/personality, whose practical realization in an AI system would be very difficult, if not impossible. In the backdrop of these serious challenges it also discusses an interesting possibility of emulation in the field of Hermeneutics, focusing on hermeneutics of ṣan‘at-e ihām (construction of ambiguity) in Urdu, Persian, Arabic, Hindi, and Punjabi poetry. The basic purpose of this work is to underscore the critical importance of this area for AI research, and to shed light on those aspects of consciousness, emotions, awareness, understanding and self whose comprehension and inclusion is necessary in designing and constructing AI systems that can parallel human mental functioning.