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AI & Mind

Can Machines Be Conscious?

Sebastian Sunday Grève and Yu Xiaoyue find an unexpected way in which the answer is ‘yes’.

Alan Turing thought that it was possible (at least in theory) to make machines that enjoyed strawberries and cream, that British summer favourite. From this we can infer that he also thought it was possible (again, at least in theory) to make machines that were conscious. For you cannot really enjoy strawberries and cream if you are not conscious – or can you? In any case, Turing was very explicit that he thought machines could be conscious. He did not, however, think it likely that such machines were going to be made any time soon. Not because he considered the task particularly difficult, but because he did not think it worth the effort: “Possibly a machine might be made to enjoy this delicious dish, but any attempt to make one do so would be idiotic,” he wrote in his influential ‘Computing Machinery and Intelligence’.

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