Machines; Can they become conscious?

If you have not heard of AI (Artificial Intelligence), it is safe to say that you have been living under a rock for the past 10 years. Artificial Intelligence, according to SAS (a multinational developer of analytics software) are: “machines that are able to learn from experience, adjust to new inputs and perform human-like tasks. The rapid development of such technology has been revolutionary. Just take ‘Siri’-the virtual assistant-on your Apple device for example, it interacts with you just like a human would. However, it can’t be considered completely “human-like” unless it became self-aware. With new programming innovations over the years, many people have started to wonder; Can machines become conscious?

Movies such as ‘Robocop’ and ‘WALL-E’ depict the rise of technology in the future and the impact it can have on our lives. However, one common theme in all of these movies is that AI has come to life and is interacting with the human race in a way which can only be a figment of our imagination. Therefore, this impending thought keeps clouding our minds, and scientists all over the world have started forming many different hypotheses, begun experimenting and paving the way for us to get the answer to this question.

An article published by ‘MIT Technology Review’, highlighted some important data from research conducted by the world’s best-known consciousness researcher, Christof Koch. The author of three books on consciousness, Koch believes that the idea of consciousness in a machine is possible, and is based on a peculiar term known as ‘integrated information theory’. Most of you must be at a loss in terms of how three simple words can form the base of a machine being self-aware, let me explain. The theory attempts to explain what consciousness is and why it might be associated with a system. The theory also predicts if a system-or in this case a machine-is conscious.

Furthermore, Koch explained that the theory makes a precise prediction on whether a system is conscious or not and also states that: consciousness is a property of systems that has an interesting way of communicating with the world, just like the brain would.

After the evaluation of such a ground-breaking theory, it would be safe to say that we can look out for a fully conscious machine in the near future. If a computer were to be built with the same circuitry as our brain, we can expect it to interact the way we would, and be fully self-aware. This is absolutely astounding, but one would hope that it does not turn against humanity and cause mass chaos. If it does you can expect me to cover all the details for you in a flash, I digress. The entirety of the global community looks on to the future where conscious machines are a norm.

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Written by Aarush Kesar