![](bg3.png)
5 BECAUSE OF THE
GENERALITY AND
UNIVERSALITY
Since an AGI system should be given with all the ca-
pabilities that the intelligent human beings actually
own, and every subject would accept that humans are
conscious, the AGI system must include such a fea-
ture. However, while most human subjects (except
impaired or people with disorders) can accomplish
the same tasks with similar performance (in the ab-
sence of training), consciousness is different and par-
ticular for each individual. Consciousness is not in-
nate
2
. It emerges during development so it is affected
by the context and the stimuli for each individual (Ze-
lazo, 2003). Besides, consciousness is not universal,
it differs among cultures and even civilizations (Ear-
ley, 2002). So, when an AGI systems incorporates a
consciousness mechanism this should be a particular
one different from other artificial systems. This mech-
anism should also evolve so that it can be modulated
by context and culture. Consciousness is not therefore
a general mechanism (in functional terms).
6 CONCLUSIONS
The problem of consciousness can be considered
among the most controversial within the “Hard” Ar-
tificial Intelligence (AI). It implies a lot of considera-
tions from differentperspectivesand knowledge fields
(Damasio, 2010), to the extent that its own existence
is even questioned. A lot of hard and rigorous work
must be carefully carried out to get closer and closer
to the solution of the problem. Rush and na¨ıve ap-
proaches might introduce noise and blur the matter
even more than it actually is. The position exposed
in this paper claims for avoiding such attempts when
there is no reasonable need for it. This might be the
case of the implementation of consciousness mech-
anisms in AGI systems, which do not require con-
sciousness as mandatory to achieve their goals, that is,
to be generally intelligent and more human-like (Har-
nad, 2003)(McClelland, 2009).
REFERENCES
Aleksander, I. L. (2009). The potential impact of machine
consciousness in science and engineering. Interna-
tional Journal of Machine Consciousness, 1(1):1–9.
2
It refers to complete and mature consciousness, not to
its the capacity of development
Antony, M. V. (2002). Concepts of consciousness, kinds of
consciousness, meanings of ’consciousness’. Philo-
sophical Studies, 109(1):1–16.
Baars, B. J. (2005). Subjective experience is probably not
limited to humans: The evidence from neurobiology
and behavior. Consciousness and Cognition, 14(1):7–
21.
Beshkar, M. (2008). Animal consciousness. Journal of
Consciousness Studies, 15(3):5–33.
Brentano, F. (1874). Psychology from an Empirical Stand-
point. International Library of Philosophy. Routledge,
2nd (1995) edition.
Damasio, A. (2010). Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the
Conscious Brain. Pantheon, 1st edition.
Damper, R. I. (2004). The chinese room argument–dead
but not yet buried. Journal of Consciousness Studies,
11(5-6):159–169.
Earley, J. E. (2002). The social evolution of consciousness.
Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 42(1):107–132.
Harnad, S. (2001). Turing Indistinguishability and the Blind
Watchmaker. John Benjamins, Amsterdam.
Harnad, S. (2003). Can a machine be conscious? how?
Journal of Consciousness Studies, 10(4):67–75.
Harnad, S. (2006). The Annotation Game: On Turing
(1950) on Computing, Machinery, and Intelligence.
Kluwer.
Humphrey, N. (2006). Consciousness: The Achilles Heel of
Darwinism? Thank God, Not Quite. Vintage.
Joynt, R. J. (1981). Are two heads better than one? Behav-
ioral and Brain Sciences, 1(4):108–109.
McClelland, J. (2009). Is a machine realization of truly
human-like intelligence achievable? Cognitive Com-
putation, 1(1):17–21.
Rosenthal, D. ((forthcoming) 2009). Concepts and Defini-
tions of Consciousness. Elsevier.
Seager, W. E. (2007). A Brief History of the Philosophi-
cal Problem of Consciousness. Cambridge University
Press.
Seth, A. K. (2009). The strength of weak artificial con-
sciousness. International Journal of Machine Con-
sciousness, 1(1):71–82.
Taylor, J. G. (2010). On artificial brains. Neurocomputing,
page (In press).
Velmans, M. (2009). How to define consciousness: And
how not to define consciousness. Journal of Con-
sciousness Studies, 5(18):139–158.
Zelazo, P. D. (2003). The development of conscious control
in childhood. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 1(8):12–
17.
ICAART 2011 - 3rd International Conference on Agents and Artificial Intelligence
676