Artificial Consciousness/Artificial Intelligence

 Artificial Intelligence   And How it Relates to Consciousness 

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the study of how to make an Intelligent Machine. Originally Artificial Consciousness was an offshoot of AI, but the studies diverged when it became obvious that Consciousness was something different from Intelligence although both were associated in the Human mind. Essentially what was discovered was that intelligence is necessary but not sufficient to explain consciousness.

Up until this principle was discovered it was thought that consciousness might be an emergent property of intelligence and if we developed a device that was intelligent enough it would also be conscious. For me the dividing line was written in Consciousness Explained by Daniel C. Dennett a book that apologized for even thinking of Consciousness as a separate topic. After reading that, I could no longer think of myself as an artificial intelligence researcher.

Students will probably find the work that is the closest to Artificial Consciousness is the relatively current work done on Agents, and Multiagent systems. One current Functional theory of consciousness is the Global Workspace theory which depends on a T.V. station like central network, and multiple agents competing for the right to work. Since the Functional School is partially supported by MIT's A.I. laboratories, The functional school of consciousness is also the one most closely related to A.I.

--Graeme E. Smith 00:42, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

See Also:

 * Artificial intelligence
 * Software Agent
 * Intelligent Agent
 * Multi-Agent System
 * Global Workspace Theory