Dual-Laws Model for a theory of artificial consciousness
This work aims to provide a foundational framework for designing conscious systems with high moral behavior, though it is incremental as it builds on existing theoretical discussions without empirical validation.
The paper tackles the challenge of developing a theory of artificial consciousness by proposing a Dual-Laws Model (DLM) that addresses seven key questions about consciousness, anticipating features like autonomy in goal construction and cognitive decoupling from stimuli.
Objectively verifying the generative mechanism of consciousness is extremely difficult because of its subjective nature. As long as theories of consciousness focus solely on its generative mechanism, developing a theory remains challenging. We believe that broadening the theoretical scope and enhancing theoretical unification are necessary to establish a theory of consciousness. This study proposes seven questions that theories of consciousness should address: phenomena, self, causation, state, function, contents, and universality. The questions were designed to examine the functional aspects of consciousness and its applicability to system design. Next, we will examine how our proposed Dual-Laws Model (DLM) can address these questions. Based on our theory, we anticipate two unique features of a conscious system: autonomy in constructing its own goals and cognitive decoupling from external stimuli. We contend that systems with these capabilities differ fundamentally from machines that merely follow human instructions. This makes a design theory that enables high moral behavior indispensable.