Can artificially intelligent agents really be conscious?

Abstract

Mind and intelligence are closely related with the consciousness. Indeed, artificial intelligence (AI) is the most promising avenue towards artificial consciousness (AC). However, in literature, consciousness has been considered as the least amenable to being understood or replicated by AI. Further, computational theories of mind (CTMs) render the mind as a computational system and it is treated as a substantial hypothesis within the purview of AI. However, the consciousness, which is a phenomenon of mind, is partially tackled by this theory and it seems that the CTM is not corroborated considerably in this pursuit. Many valuable contributions have been incorporated by the researchers working strenuously in this domain. However, there is still scarcity of globally accepted computational models of consciousness that can be used to design conscious intelligent machines. The contributions of the researchers entail consciousness as a vague, incomplete and human-centred entity. In this paper, attempt has been made to analyse different theoretical and intricate issues pertaining to mind, intelligence and AC. Moreover, this paper discusses different computational models of the consciousness and critically analyses the possibility of generating the machine consciousness as well as identifying the characteristics of conscious machine. Further, different inquisitive questions, e.g., “Is it possible to devise, project and build a conscious machine?”, “Will artificially conscious machines be able to surpass the functioning of artificially intelligent machines?” and “Does consciousness reflect a peculiar way of information processing?” are analysed.