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Artificial Intelligence and Consciousness Artificial Intelligence and Consciousness Antonio Chella1, Riccardo Manzotti2 1Department of Computer Engineering, University of Palermo Viale delle Scienze, 90128, Palermo, Italy [email protected] 2Institute of Communication, Enterprise Consumption and Behaviour, IULM University, via Carlo Bo, 20143, Milan, Italy [email protected] Morpheus : We have only bits and pieces of information, but what we know for certain is that some point 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. from The Matrix script, 1999 Abstract 2001; Baars, 2002; Franklin, 2003; Kuipers, 2005; Adami, Consciousness is no longer a threatening notion in the 2006; Minsky, 2006; Chella and Manzotti, 2007). community of AI. In human beings, consciousness At the same time, trying to implement a conscious machine corresponds to a collection of different features of human is a feasible approach to the scientific understanding of cognition. AI researchers are interested in understanding consciousness itself. Edelman and Tononi wrote that: “to and, whether achievable, to replicate them in agents. It is understand the mental we may have to invent further ways fair to claim that there is a broad consensus about the of looking at brains. We may even have to synthesize distinction between the phenomenal and the cognitive artifacts resembling brains connected to bodily functions in aspects of consciousness (sometimes referred to as P- and order fully to understand those processes. Although the day A-Consciousness). The former problem is somehow related when we shall be able to create such conscious artifacts is with the so-called hard problem and requires deep theoretical commitments. The latter problems are more far off we may have to make them before we deeply frequently if not successfully addressed by the AI understand the processes of thought itself.” (Edelman and community. By and large, several models are competing to Tononi, 2000). suggest the better way to deal with cognitive aspects of The field of artificial consciousness naturally emerges consciousness allegedly missing from traditional AI from AI and consciousness debate. implementations. The AAAI Symposium on AI and According to Holland (Holland, 2003), it is possible to Consciousness presents an overview on the current state of distinguish between Weak Artificial Consciousness and the art of consciousness inspired AI research. Strong Artificial Consciousness. Holland defines them as follow: Introduction 1. Weak Artificial Consciousness: design and construction of machine that simulates In the last ten years there has been a growing interest consciousness or cognitive processes usually towards the field of consciousness. Several researchers, correlated with consciousness. also from traditional Artificial Intelligence, addressed the hypothesis of designing and implementing models for 2. Strong Artificial Consciousness: design and artificial consciousness (sometimes referred to as machine construction of conscious machines. consciousness or synthetic consciousness) – on one hand Most of the people currently working in AI could embrace there is hope of being able to design a model for the former definition. Anyhow, the boundaries between the consciousness, on the other hand the actual twos are not easy to define. For instance, if a machine implementations of such models could be helpful for could exhibit all behaviors normally associated with a understanding consciousness (Minsky, 1985; Baars, 1988; conscious being, would it be a conscious machine? Are Franklin, 1995; McCarthy, 1995; Aleksander, 2000; there behaviors which are uniquely correlated with Edelman and Tononi, 2000; Jennings, 2000; Aleksander, consciousness? Other authors claim that the understanding of consciousness could provide a better foundation for complex control whenever autonomy has to be achieved. Copyright © 2007, Association for the Advancement of Artificial In this respect, consciousness-inspired architectures could Intelligence (www.aaai.org). All rights reserved. be, at least in principle, applied to all kind of complex 1 systems ranging from a petrochemical plant to a complex interaction between the brain, the body and the network of computers. The complexity of current artificial surrounding environment has been pointed out (Chrisley, systems is such that outperforms traditional control 2003; Rockwell, 2005; Chella and Manzotti, 2007; techniques. Manzotti, 2007). According to Sanz, there are three motivations to pursue In the field of AI there has been a considerable interest artificial consciousness (Sanz, 2005): towards consciousness. Marvin Minsky was one of the firsts to point out that “some machines are already • implementing and designing machines resembling potentially more conscious than are people, and that further human beings (cognitive robotics); enhancements would be relatively easy to make. However, • understanding the nature of consciousness (cognitive this does not imply that those machines would thereby, science); automatically, become much more intelligent. This is • implementing and designing more efficient control because it is one thing to have access to data, but another systems. thing to know how to make good use of it.” (Minsky, 1991) The current generation of systems for man-machine The target of researchers involved in recent work on interaction shows impressive performances with respect to artificial consciousness is twofold: the nature of the mechanics and the control of movements; see for phenomenal consciousness (the so-called hard problem) example the anthropomorphic robots produced by the and the active role of consciousness in controlling and Japanese companies and universities. However, these planning the behaviour of an agent. We do not know yet if robots, currently at the state of the art, present only limited it is possible to solve the two aspects separately. capabilities of perception, reasoning and action in novel Most mammals seem to show some kind of consciousness and unstructured environments. Moreover, the capabilities – in particular, human beings. Therefore, it is highly of user-robot interaction are standardized and well defined. probable that the kind of cognitive architecture responsible A new generation of robots and softbots aimed at for consciousness has some evolutionary advantage. interacting with humans in an unconstrained environment Although it is still difficult to single out a precise shall need a better awareness of their surroundings and of functional role for consciousness, many believe that the relevant events, objects, and agents. In short, the new consciousness endorses more robust autonomy, higher generation of robots and softbots shall need some form of resilience, more general capability for problem-solving, artificial consciousness. reflexivity, and self-awareness (Atkinson, Thomas et al., AI has long avoided facing consciousness in agents. Yet 2000; McDermott, 2001; Franklin, 2003; Bongard, Zykov consciousness corresponds to many aspects of human et al., 2006). cognition which are essential to our highest cognitive There are a few research areas that cooperate and compete capabilities: autonomy, resilience, phenomenal experience, in order to outline the framework of this new field: learning, attention. In the past, it was customary to embodiment; simulation and depiction; environmentalism approach the human mind as if consciousness was an or externalism, extended control theory. None of them is unnecessary gadget that could be added at the end. The completely independent of the others. They strive to reach prevailing attitude regarded consciousness as a confused a higher level of integration. name for a set of ill-posed problems. Yet, classic AI faced Embodiment tries to address the issues of symbol many problems and, under many respects, similar grounding, anchoring, and intentionality. Recent work problems are now facing neural networks, robotics, emphasizing the role of embodiment in grounding autonomous agents and control systems. The fact is that AI conscious experience goes beyond the insights of systems, although a lot more advanced than in the past, still Brooksian embodied AI and discussions of symbol fall short of human agents. Consciousness could be the grounding (Harnad, 1990; Harnad, 1995; Ziemke, 2001; missing step in the ladder from current artificial agents to Holland, 2003; Bongard, Zykov et al., 2006). On this human like agents. A few years ago, John Haugeland asked view, a crucial role for the body in an artificial whether (Haugeland, 1985/1997, p. 247): “Could be consciousness is to provide the unified, meaning-giving consciousness a theoretical time bomb ticking away in the locus required to support and justify attributions of belly of AI?” coherent experience in the first place. Simulation and depiction deal with synthetic phenomenology developing models of mental imagery, Consciousness inspired AI research attention, working memory. Progress has been made in Consciousness inspired AI research appeared in many understanding how imagination- and simulation-guided different contexts ranging from robotics to control systems, action (Hesslow, 2003), along with the virtual reality from simulation to autonomous systems. metaphor (Revonsuo, 1995), are crucial components of Epigenetic robotics and synthetic approaches to robotics
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