Title |
What is consciousness, and could machines have it?
|
---|---|
Published in |
Science, October 2017
|
DOI | 10.1126/science.aan8871 |
Pubmed ID | |
Authors |
Stanislas Dehaene, Hakwan Lau, Sid Kouider |
Abstract |
The controversial question of whether machines may ever be conscious must be based on a careful consideration of how consciousness arises in the only physical system that undoubtedly possesses it: the human brain. We suggest that the word "consciousness" conflates two different types of information-processing computations in the brain: the selection of information for global broadcasting, thus making it flexibly available for computation and report (C1, consciousness in the first sense), and the self-monitoring of those computations, leading to a subjective sense of certainty or error (C2, consciousness in the second sense). We argue that despite their recent successes, current machines are still mostly implementing computations that reflect unconscious processing (C0) in the human brain. We review the psychological and neural science of unconscious (C0) and conscious computations (C1 and C2) and outline how they may inspire novel machine architectures. |
X Demographics
Geographical breakdown
Country | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
United States | 76 | 13% |
France | 57 | 10% |
United Kingdom | 34 | 6% |
Canada | 16 | 3% |
Spain | 13 | 2% |
Germany | 11 | 2% |
Japan | 11 | 2% |
Netherlands | 11 | 2% |
Australia | 10 | 2% |
Other | 84 | 15% |
Unknown | 243 | 43% |
Demographic breakdown
Type | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
Members of the public | 379 | 67% |
Scientists | 153 | 27% |
Practitioners (doctors, other healthcare professionals) | 21 | 4% |
Science communicators (journalists, bloggers, editors) | 13 | 2% |
Mendeley readers
Geographical breakdown
Country | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
Unknown | 1059 | 100% |
Demographic breakdown
Readers by professional status | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
Student > Ph. D. Student | 231 | 22% |
Researcher | 155 | 15% |
Student > Master | 150 | 14% |
Student > Bachelor | 120 | 11% |
Student > Doctoral Student | 55 | 5% |
Other | 181 | 17% |
Unknown | 167 | 16% |
Readers by discipline | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
Neuroscience | 193 | 18% |
Psychology | 180 | 17% |
Computer Science | 107 | 10% |
Agricultural and Biological Sciences | 80 | 8% |
Engineering | 48 | 5% |
Other | 222 | 21% |
Unknown | 229 | 22% |