Can Artificial Intelligence be conscious?

Can Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence be con­scious?

Abstract. This paper, ini­ti­at­ed by a dis­cus­sion about the philo­soph­i­cal prob­lems of the “Black Mir­ror” series, exam­ines whether arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence might be con­sid­ered con­scious. For a pos­si­ble answer, we view Rene Descartes’ con­cept of ‘I’ and Arthur Schopenhauer’s idea of the world as the will and rep­re­sen­ta­tion. Along with it, we also re-fer to con­tem­po­rary views from psy­chol­o­gy and neu­ropsy­chol­o­gy. In addi­tion, we dis­tin­guish and attempt to describe some key con­cepts relat­ed to human behav­ior, such as sub­ject, sub­ject­ness, and con­scious­ness, which in the sequel might be used to describe non-human activ­i­ties. 

Key­words: con­scious­ness, arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, sub­ject, Black mir­ror, neur­al net­work

DOI: 10.5840/dspl2019216

Ref­er­ences:

1. Grant, D. Watch the “Black Mir­ror” Christ­mas Spe­cial with Jon Hamm, The Observ­er, 30 Decem­ber 2014. Avail­able at: https://observer.com/2014/12/cookies-arent-grains-debunking-the-single-universe-theory-of-black-mirror/ (accessed on Jan­u­ary 22, 2019).
2. Schopen­hauer, A. Mir kak volya i pred­stavleniye [The World as Will and Rep­re­sen­ta­tion], in: A. Schopen­hauer. Sobranie sochi­nenij [Col­lect­ed Works], in 6 vol., vol. 1 / transl. [from Ger­man] and ed. by A. Chany­shev. Moscow: TER­RA-Knizh­nyj klub Publ.; Respub­li­ka Publ., 1999. 496 pp. (In Russ­ian)