Is artificial consciousness achievable? Lessons from the human brain

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Hauptverfasser: Farisco, Michele, Evers, Kathinka, Changeux, Jean-Pierre
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2024
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author Farisco, Michele
Evers, Kathinka
Changeux, Jean-Pierre
author_facet Farisco, Michele
Evers, Kathinka
Changeux, Jean-Pierre
contents We here analyse the question of developing artificial consciousness from an evolutionary perspective, taking the evolution of the human brain and its relation with consciousness as a reference model. This kind of analysis reveals several structural and functional features of the human brain that appear to be key for reaching human-like complex conscious experience and that current research on Artificial Intelligence (AI) should take into account in its attempt to develop systems capable of conscious processing. We argue that, even if AI is limited in its ability to emulate human consciousness for both intrinsic (structural and architectural) and extrinsic (related to the current stage of scientific and technological knowledge) reasons, taking inspiration from those characteristics of the brain that make conscious processing possible and/or modulate it, is a potentially promising strategy towards developing conscious AI. Also, it is theoretically possible that AI research can develop partial or potentially alternative forms of consciousness that is qualitatively different from the human, and that may be either more or less sophisticated depending on the perspectives. Therefore, we recommend neuroscience-inspired caution in talking about artificial consciousness: since the use of the same word consciousness for humans and AI becomes ambiguous and potentially misleading, we propose to clearly specify what is common and what differs in AI conscious processing from full human conscious experience.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2405_04540
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Is artificial consciousness achievable? Lessons from the human brain
Farisco, Michele
Evers, Kathinka
Changeux, Jean-Pierre
Neurons and Cognition
Artificial Intelligence
We here analyse the question of developing artificial consciousness from an evolutionary perspective, taking the evolution of the human brain and its relation with consciousness as a reference model. This kind of analysis reveals several structural and functional features of the human brain that appear to be key for reaching human-like complex conscious experience and that current research on Artificial Intelligence (AI) should take into account in its attempt to develop systems capable of conscious processing. We argue that, even if AI is limited in its ability to emulate human consciousness for both intrinsic (structural and architectural) and extrinsic (related to the current stage of scientific and technological knowledge) reasons, taking inspiration from those characteristics of the brain that make conscious processing possible and/or modulate it, is a potentially promising strategy towards developing conscious AI. Also, it is theoretically possible that AI research can develop partial or potentially alternative forms of consciousness that is qualitatively different from the human, and that may be either more or less sophisticated depending on the perspectives. Therefore, we recommend neuroscience-inspired caution in talking about artificial consciousness: since the use of the same word consciousness for humans and AI becomes ambiguous and potentially misleading, we propose to clearly specify what is common and what differs in AI conscious processing from full human conscious experience.
title Is artificial consciousness achievable? Lessons from the human brain
topic Neurons and Cognition
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.04540