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Human consciousness has been studied by philosophers, neuroscientists and psychologists for decades but it remains an illusive concept over which there is still significant disagreement. In this talk, we focus on the problems that consciousness might be solving in nature and how those problems manifest themselves in artificial autonomous systems. Under the assumption that consciousness has emerged through evolution to make species that have consciousness more fit in an environment than competing species, it makes sense to conclude that autonomous systems with "artificial consciousness” would be superior to systems without it. We develop the need to introduce consciousness as a consequence of the complexity of the environment in which a system is required to operate. We demonstrate that a suitable notion of artificial consciousness results in world models that grow linearly as opposed to exponentially. This scalability allows ”conscious” autonomous systems to operate at higher performance levels than otherwise possible.