Organisational remark: As part of the active participation, it will be mandatory to attend talks at a workshop on consciousness in animals and artificial systems, organized by Albert Newen and Wanja Wiese. The talks that all participants have to attend will take place on the 1st/2nd of June 2023 at Ruhr University Bochum. In turn, some of the seminar’s sessions in June and July will be dropped.
Can artificial systems be conscious? If yes, how could we find out? Understanding consciousness in human and non-human animals is hard, but understanding artificial consciousness seems even harder. At the same time, rapid advances in AI and growing ethical concerns about the creation of artificial 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 artificial systems can be conscious. Finally, we will discuss ethical questions of artifcial consciousness: Would conscious artificial systems be able to suffer, perhaps in ways we cannot even imagine? Is the attempt to create conscious artificial systems unethical, or do the potential benefits outweigh the risks? What moral rights should conscious robots have? Could machines be moral agents and have moral responsibility?
Dehaene, S., Lau, H., & Kouider, S. (2017). What is consciousness, and could machines have it? Science, 358, 486–492.
Gamez, D. (Ed.). (2018). Human and Machine Consciousness. Open Book Publishers. https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0107
Graziano, M. S. A. (2017). The Attention Schema Theory: A Foundation for Engineering Artificial Consciousness. Frontiers in Robotics and AI, 4, 60.
Can artificial systems be conscious? If yes, how could we find out? Understanding consciousness in human and non-human animals is hard, but understanding artificial consciousness seems even harder. At the same time, rapid advances in AI and growing ethical concerns about the creation of artificial 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 artificial systems can be conscious. Finally, we will discuss ethical questions of artifcial consciousness: Would conscious artificial systems be able to suffer, perhaps in ways we cannot even imagine? Is the attempt to create conscious artificial systems unethical, or do the potential benefits outweigh the risks? What moral rights should conscious robots have? Could machines be moral agents and have moral responsibility?
Dehaene, S., Lau, H., & Kouider, S. (2017). What is consciousness, and could machines have it? Science, 358, 486–492.
Gamez, D. (Ed.). (2018). Human and Machine Consciousness. Open Book Publishers. https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0107
Graziano, M. S. A. (2017). The Attention Schema Theory: A Foundation for Engineering Artificial Consciousness. Frontiers in Robotics and AI, 4, 60.
- Kursleiter/in: Wanja Wiese
Semester: WT 2024/25