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Can machines be conscious and how could we find out?
Understanding consciousness in human and non-human animals is hard, but
understanding machine consciousness seems even harder. At the same time,
rapid advances in AI and growing ethical concerns about the creation of
machine consciousness demand an answer to the question under what
conditions consciousness should be ascribed to artificial entities. The seminar has a systematic focus on contemporary philosophy of consciousness and machine ethics. We will first discuss theories and general problems of consciousness. We will then apply these to the question under what conditions machines can be conscious. Finally, we will discuss ethical questions of machine consciousness: Would conscious machines be able to suffer, perhaps in ways we cannot even imagine? Is the attempt to create conscious machines unethical, or do the potential benefits outweigh the risks? What moral rights should conscious machines have? Could machines be moral agents and have moral responsibility? |
Literatur:
Dehaene, S., Lau, H., & Kouider, S. (2017). What is consciousness, and could machines have it? Science, 358, 486–492.
Metzinger, T. (2021). Artificial Suffering: An Argument for a Global Moratorium on Synthetic Phenomenology. Journal of Artificial Intelligence and Consciousness, 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1142/S270507852150003X
Reggia, J. A. (2013). The rise of machine consciousness: Studying consciousness with computational models. Neural Netw, 44, 112–131. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neunet.2013.03.011
Schneider, S. (2019). Artificial You: AI and the future of your mind. Princeton University Press.
Wallach, W., & Allen, C. (2009). Moral Machines. Oxford University Press.
- Kursleiter/in: Wanja Wiese
Semester: WT 2024/25