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  • The development of conscious machines faces a number of difficult issues such as the apparent immateriality of mind, qualia and self-awareness. Also consciousness-related cognitive processes such as perception, imagination, motivation and inner speech are a technical challenge. It is foreseen that the development of machine consciousness would call for a system approach; the developer of conscious machines should consider complete systems that integrate the cognitive processes seamlessly and process information in a transparent way with representational and non-representational information-processing modes. An overview of the main issues is given and some possible solutions are outlined.

  • It is argued that qualia are the primary way in which sensory information manifests itself in mind. Qualia are not seen as properties of the physical world, ready to be observed; instead it is argued that they are the way in which the sensory system's response to the sensed stimuli manifests itself inside the system. Systems that have qualia have direct and transparent access to this response. It is argued that even though qualia are produced inside the head, they appear to be outside because this appearance complies with our motions, small and large, in the word. To be conscious in the way that we experience it is to have qualia. True conscious machines must have qualia, but the qualities of machine qualia need not be similar to the qualities of human qualia.

  • Will Artificial Intelligence soon surpass the capacities of the human mind and will Strong Artificial General Intelligence replace the contemporary Weak AI? It might appear to be so, but there are certain fundamental issues that have to be addressed before this can happen. There can be no intelligence without understanding, and there can be no understanding without getting meanings. Contemporary computers manipulate symbols without meanings, which are not incorporated in the computations. This leads to the Symbol Grounding Problem; how could meanings be incorporated? The use of self-explanatory sensory information has been proposed as a possible solution. However, self-explanatory information can only be used in neural network machines that are different from existing digital computers and traditional multilayer neural networks. In humans self-explanatory information has the form of qualitative sensory experiences, qualia. To have reportable qualia is to be phenomenally conscious. This leads to the hypothesis about an unavoidable connection between the solution of the Symbol Grounding Problem and consciousness. If, in general, self-explanatory information equals to qualia, then machines that utilize self-explanatory information would be conscious. The author presents the associative neural architecture HCA as a solution to these problems and the robot XCR-1 as its partial experimental verification.

  • New product and system opportunities are expected to arise when the next step in information technology takes place. Existing Artificial Intelligence is based on preprogramed algorithms that operate in a mechanistic way in the computer. The computer and the program do not understand what is being processed. Without the consideration of meaning, no understanding can take place. This lack of understanding is seen as the major shortcoming of Artificial Intelligence, one that prevents it to achieve its original goal; thinking machines with full human-like cognition and intelligence. The emerging technology of Machine Consciousness is expected to remedy this shortcoming. Machine Consciousness technology is expected to create new opportunities in robotics, information technology gadgets and general information processing calling for machine understanding of auditory, visual and linguistic information.

  • The popular expectation is that Artificial Intelligence (AI) will soon surpass the capacities of the human mind and Strong Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) will replace the contemporary Weak AI. However, there are certain fundamental issues that have to be addressed before this can happen. There can be no intelligence without understanding, and there can be no understanding without getting meanings. Contemporary computers manipulate symbols without meanings, which are not incorporated in the computations. This leads to the Symbol Grounding Problem; how could meanings be incorporated? The use of self-explanatory sensory information has been proposed as a possible solution. However, self-explanatory information can only be used in neural network machines that are different from existing digital computers and traditional multilayer neural networks. In humans, self-explanatory information has the form of qualia. To have reportable qualia is to be phenomenally conscious. This leads to the hypothesis about an unavoidable connection between the solution of the Symbol Grounding Problem and consciousness. If, in general, self-explanatory information equals to qualia, then machines that utilize self-explanatory information would be conscious.

Last update from database: 3/23/25, 8:36 AM (UTC)