Can AI Have Consciousness?
Key to resolve: Is Consciousness the first person experiencer or the first person awareness of the very experiencer?
Before tackling the question of AI having consciousness, it is necessary to have a clear idea of the term ‘consciousness’ itself that is used rather loosely.
So let’s first look at this term through our own lived experience before going to AI.
Our Lived Experience
Let’s say we eat chocolate, and there is a first person experience of the pleasure of eating chocolate. There is also the first person awareness of this first person experience. If that sounds confusing, let’s look at it in words:
I am enjoying the chocolate.
I am aware that I am enjoying the chocolate.
Notice that both are happening at the same time. So are there two I’s? That doesn’t make intuitive sense. Then, which is the real I?
To answer the question, let’s see what happens a few moments after eating chocolate. Say, I have a tooth ache because of eating chocolate. Now again there are two first person accounts:
I have a tooth ache.
I am aware that I have a tooth ache.
So we see that the action of the seeming subject ‘I’ in the first sentence changed completely based on the object of experience, from enjoyer to sufferer. Whereas the subject ‘I’ in the second sentence is the same regardless of whether enjoying chocolate or suffering toot ache. This subject I is simply aware.
The two I’s phenomenon can be vividly seen in the case of dreams, just in the way we talk about it. For instance, we may say:
I dreamed that I saw a tiger.
Again the same question can be asked since there are two I’s in this sentence: which is the real I?
We then see that the seeming subject I ‘within’ the dream keeps changing based on the object of dream experience. It can be as follows:
I dreamed that I saw a tiger.
I dreamed that I felt relieved on seeing the tiger walk away.
I dreamed that I drove away in my car.
Again the seeming subject ‘I’ that sees the tiger, drives away etc. keeps on changing based on the object of the experience. Whereas the actual subject ‘I’ that dreamed is the same regardless of whatever the seeming subject-object experience unfolds within the dream.
The dreamer is simply the awareness which is the primary subject I within which the dream unfolds with its own seeming subject I that keeps on changing with the object.
So with the waking state. The awareness is the primary subject and it is simply aware of whatever unfolds in the waking experience with its own seeming subject I that keeps on changing with the object.
To summarize, there is the unchanging ‘awarer’ I. And there is the ever changing ‘experiencer’ I.
What Is Consciousness?
Now what is consciousness? Is it the subjective first person experience? Or is it the unchanging awareness of the ever changing first person experience?
In other words, is consciousness the ‘awarer’ or the ‘experiencer’?
Words are used arbitrarily and we notice that while Eastern spiritual literature equates consciousness with the ‘awarer’, Western scientific literature equates consciousness with the ‘experiencer’.
So let’s toss aside this vague sounding word ‘consciousness’ that can mean two different things based on the context and simply stick to the clear terms ‘awarer’ and ‘experiencer’.
Now the question on whether AI can have consciousness can be reduced to two different questions:
Can AI have the subjective first person ‘awarer’?
Can AI have the subjective first person ‘experiencer’?
Awarer and Experiencer
It’s important to reiterate that the content of the first person ‘awarer’ is always the same — to be simply aware of whatever unfolds as experience, whereas the content of the first person ‘experiencer’ is dependent on the experience. Both the object of the experience and the subjective ‘experiencer’ are objects to the unchanging ‘awarer’ subject:
I am aware of the experience.
I am aware of the experiencer.
The experience and the experiencer are both within the field of awareness and therefore, objects to the ‘awarer’ I.
AI and Experiencer
Turning again to AI, let’s first look at the ‘experiencer’ phenomenon of consciousness.
The question here is, if an AI system is playing chess, can it have the first person subjective experience that ‘I am playing chess’, ‘I have won’? If AI is writing a poem, can it have the first person experience that ‘I am writing this poem’?
We notice that this ever changing experiencer ‘self’ that is built through experience is entirely based on conditioning and the content of the experience. And anything that is tied to content is programmable. Therefore, we can see the possibility of programming a self that is simply a repository of memory and accessible as an image built in memory through any activity or experience, past and present.
It is worth clarifying here that of course an AI system cannot have the subjective experiences that are due to biological activities of humans such as food, sex etc. It only shares the realm of activities of the mind with humans and any subjective experience that humans have due to mental activities can well be within the reach of AI. So the first person experience of eating chocolate is not possible for AI because chocolates are not meant for silicon based systems. But the first person experience of writing a poem, developing a sense of self as a poet and even associated feelings such as pride are certainly not unthinkable for AI systems. They can be developed in AI through the same learning algorithms that are used to write poems in the first place.
AI and Awarer
Now let’s look at the ‘awarer’ aspect of Consciousness.
It is clear that the unchanging awareness which can be capitalized as the ‘Self’ is totally independent of content that always changes. Therefore, it is not an image built through conditioning, it is not stored in the memory. It is simply a spontaneous light of awareness in which all experience comes and goes, much like the light in a room that illuminates all experiences without being affected by any changes in the experiences within the room. It is the fundamental substrate or the screen in which all experiences come and go. Hence, it is not something that can be modeled or programmed.
What Is Within Reach for AI
To summarize, we can see that the ever changing subjective experiencer self is well within the reach of AI systems with the right modeling and deep learning algorithms. So it is not difficult to conceive of the day when we can have the sense of interacting with a ‘person’ while dealing with AI. After all, the sense of being a person is only the subjective experiencer self that is built through the content of experiences gathered over time.
On the other hand, the aware Self is ‘impersonal’ by definition, free of any content or attributes, and therefore not within the realm of being programmed or learned by AI systems.
