Review of Consciousness and the Possibility of Conscious Robots

Abstract

This paper discusses the psychological, philosophical, and neurological definitions of consciousness and the prospects for the development of conscious machines or robots in the foreseeable future. Various definitions of consciousness are introduced and discussed within the different fields mentioned. A conscious machine or robot may be within the realm of engineering possibilities if current technological developments, especially Moore's law, continue at their current pace. Given the complexity of cognition and consciousness a hybrid parallel architecture with significant input/output appears to offer the best solution for the implementation of a complex system of systems which functionally approximates a human mind. Ideally, this architecture would include traditional symbolic representations as well as distributed representations which approximate the nonlinear dynamics seen in the human brain.

Deep Blue Cannot Play Checkers: The Need for Generalized Intelligence for Mobile Robots

“…We have argued in previous papers [3,36] that complex cognition will require a complex approach Both symbolic and subsymbolic systems appear to have some limitations with regard to generalization, however, newer subsymbolic are capable of addressing some of the limitations associated with subsymbolic learning. Symbolic systems show some promise with generalization given enough prior information and the use of frames or scripts.…”

“…Specifically, the cerebral cortex and frontal lobes of the human cognitive system are capable of accomplishing symbolic manipulations of information while other parts of the system appear to operate-functionallyin a more distributed manner. However, the cerebral cortex and frontal lobes are probably neurologically distributed Figure 1: SS-RICS notional data flow with the symbolic and subsymbolic distinctions [3].…”

“…There is a need for these robots to be both intelligent and autonomous (and they may become conscious too [3]). Current mobile robots have very little intelligence or autonomy.…”

Integration of Maps into the Cognitive Robotic System

“…Long and Kelley 16 discussed the possibility of conscious (or self-aware) robots. They described components that would be useful for an architecture for a possibly conscious robot: Soar could be used as part of such an intelligent system.…”

Robotic Dreams: A Computational Justification for the Post-Hoc Processing of Episodic Memories

“…In previous work [Long and Kelley, 2010], it was noted that machine consciousness is a theoretically achievable goal in the near future, given su±cient computational resources and technological savvy. However, as our previous work also noted, one of the problems with creating a conscious machine is the variety de¯nitions of human consciousness À À À to include neurological, psychological, and philosophical de¯nitions.…”