THE STRENGTH OF WEAK ARTIFICIAL CONSCIOUSNESS
International Journal of Machine Consciousness May 19, 2009 Anil K. Seth 45 citations
Weak artificial consciousness—using synthetic models to simulate neural mechanisms—can advance understanding of how those mechanisms produce conscious experience, whereas strong artificial consciousness, which aims to instantiate consciousness in machines, is less likely to yield such insights. Synthetic models can serve as "explanatory correlates" that causally account for deep structural properties of consciousness. Strong artificial consciousness, while not impossible, has not been credibly illustrated and suffers from circularity: using models both as instantiations and as tools for discovering principles delays empirical comparison.