Could a machine ever feel pain, experience pleasure, or simply have an experience of the world of its own? As artificial intelligence (AI) tools become capable of conversing, reasoning and learning, the question is gradually moving from science fiction novels to laboratories. It is of particular interest to researchers who are trying to understand what causes consciousness to emerge.
But a problem arises from the outset: we still don't know exactly why we are conscious. Scientists suggest that consciousness is intimately linked to our biological brain. For others, it would depend above all on the way in which information is processed and an artificial system could, in principle, reproduce the processes essential to conscious experience.
This is the question that Ulysse Klatzmann, postdoctoral researcher in cognitive and computational neuroscience at the Azrieli Research Center at CHU Sainte-Justine and at the University of Montreal, and Adrien Doerig, of the Free University of Berlin, examine in an article entitled “What biology can, and cannot, tell us about conscious AI”. They do not seek to determine whether current AI systems are conscious. They ask a more fundamental question: what can biology really teach us about artificial consciousness?