Machine Consciousness as Pseudoscience: The Myth of Conscious Machines

Summary

The idea that machines could become conscious has been widely discussed in artificial intelligence and transhumanist literature, often based on the assumption that sufficient computational complexity might produce phenomenal consciousness. However, this paper argues that such literature lacks scientific rigor because the hypothesis that machines are not conscious cannot be falsified. The authors provide a list of arguments showing that every approach in machine consciousness research relies on philosophical assumptions unprovable by the scientific method. They specifically demonstrate that phenomenal consciousness is not computable, regardless of algorithmic complexity, cannot be objectively measured or quantitatively defined, and is inherently subjective and internal to the observer. The work concludes that the notion of conscious machines is currently a myth of transhumanism and science fiction culture.

Study at a glance

Abstract

The hypothesis of conscious machines has been debated since the invention of the notion of artificial intelligence, powered by the assumption that the computational intelligence achieved by a system is the cause of the emergence of phenomenal consciousness in that system as an epiphenomenon or as a consequence of the behavioral or internal complexity of the system surpassing some threshold. As a consequence, a huge amount of literature exploring the possibility of machine consciousness and how to implement it on a computer has been published. Moreover, common folk psychology and transhumanism literature has fed this hypothesis with the popularity of science fiction literature, where intelligent robots are usually antropomorphized and hence given phenomenal consciousness. However, in this work, we argue how these literature lacks scientific rigour, being impossible to falsify the opposite hypothesis, and illustrate a list of arguments that show how every approach that the machine consciousness literature has published depends on philosophical assumptions that cannot be proven by the scientific method. Concretely, we also show how phenomenal consciousness is not computable, independently on the complexity of the algorithm or model, cannot be objectively measured nor quantitatively defined and it is basically a phenomenon that is subjective and internal to the observer. Given all those arguments we end the work arguing why the idea of conscious machines is nowadays a myth of transhumanism and science fiction culture.