Synthesising Humanity

Morpheus: In the early twenty-first century all of mankind was united in celebration. We marvelled at our own magnificence as we gave birth to AI. Neo: AI - you mean Artificial Intelligence? Morpheus: A singular consciousness that spawned an entire race of machines.

Morpheus statement in The Matrix associating consciousness with AI exemplifies the aspirations of all engaged in attempts to emulate the interoperation of the neural correlates of consciousness by means of cognitive robotics. The domain of artificial consciousness thus arises as a natural consequence of the juxtaposition of AI and the debate over consciousness. The development of cognitivism, which coincided temporally with the naissance of artificial intelligence, introduced the premise that the organism is an information processor converting physical or symbolic stimulus
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to response. The cognitivist perspective lends

credence to the metaphor of the mind as a computer, which is concordant to the possibility of the development of artificial consciousness by instantiation of mental states through replication of the pattern of causal roles. As Chalmers reasons, Computations can capture other systems abstract causal organization. Mental properties are abstract causal organization. Therefore, computers running the right kind of computations will instantiate mental properties. 2 In this context, Owen Holland explicitly delineates Weak and Strong artificial consciousness 3 with the former pertaining to machines that could simulate cognitive processes related to consciousness while the latter introduces the paradigm of the machine as a conscious being per se. Subscription to the first viewpoint embraces the notion of artificially intelligent anthropomorphic robots competent in perception and action in unstructured environments. As hypothesised and illustrated by Gene D. Steinhauer, programs coded in
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Hillner, Kenneth P. Psychological Reality, Advances in Psychology, Elsevier Science Publishers, 1985. Chalmers, David J. A Computational Foundation for the Study of Cognition, University of California, 1993. Holland, Owen. Machine Consciousness ed., Imprint Academic, 2003.

Applesoft BASIC may effectively simulate psychological states

and expressions of emotion.

Furthermore, specific robotic platforms based on architectures distinctly demarcated into conceptual, subconceptual and linguistic modules, 5 render the robot capable of perceiving its status and consequently, of creating a higher order representation of itself, thereby prompting assertions of self-consciousness. Consciousness originates from the structure of the self-models,6 utilised by intelligent systems to reason about themselves. In accordance with Igor Aleksanders criteria for consciousness,7 the questions that confront researchers in the realm of AI today are that of phenomenal consciousness pertaining to the qualia, and intentionality or the symbol-grounding problem, 8 addressed by simulations and embodiment respectively. However the only evidence of a digital automaton being a sentient entity is solely our own impulse to attribute consciousness to it.
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Hence, only time may judge the verity of Hans Moravecs construal of

Moores law and his ensuing prophecy that consciousness would eventually be an inevitable consequence of the development of artificial intelligence. 10

Steinhauer, Gene D. Artificial Behaviour: Computer Simulation of Psychological Processes, Prentice Hall Personal Computing Series, 1986.

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Chella, Antonio and Manzotti, Riccardo. Artificial Intelligence and Consciousness, University of Palermo, 2007. Minsky, Marvin. Semantic Information Processing, MIT Press, 1968. Aleksander, Igor. Artificial Neuroconsciousness an Update, From Natural to Artificial Neural Computation Lecture Notes in Computer Science Volume 930, 1995.

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Harnad, Stevan. The Symbol Grounding Problem, Princeton University, 1990. McDermott, Drew. Artificial Intelligence and Consciousness, Yale University, 2007. Moravec, Hans. Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence, Harvard University Press 1988.

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