The Principles of Human-like Conscious Machine
arXiv Preprint Archive September 21, 2025 Fangfang Li, Xiaojie Zhang
A proposed sufficiency criterion for phenomenal consciousness is substrate-independent, logically rigorous, and counterfeit-resistant. Any machine satisfying this criterion should be regarded as conscious with the same confidence as attributing consciousness to other humans. A formal framework and operational principles guide the design of such machines, which can in principle realize phenomenal consciousness. Humans themselves can be viewed as machines satisfying this framework. The proposal explains why certain qualia, like the experience of red, are irreducible to physical description, and offers a reinterpretation of human information processing, suggesting a path toward genuinely human-like AI beyond current statistics-based approaches.