Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about artificial intelligence, from reading this awesome two-part article (1, 2) on artificial intelligence, written about a month ago by Tim Urban on his awesome blog-style website “Wait But Why”. If you haven’t read the article, read it now. It’s a lengthy read, but it’s COMPLETELY worth it.

Among the many things that interested me in that article was the idea of artificial consciousness. It’s exactly what its name suggests – artificial machines being conscious in the same way humans are.

So a few days ago, I was thinking about artificial consciousness, and realized that I didn’t understand how in the hell that can be a thing at all. I was confused even more when I learned that many fictional robots, for example Wall-E or the robots in Futurama, are conscious and self-aware. What’s that all about? Was I missing something about artificial consciousness that the creators of Wall-E or Futurama understood?

In this blog post I will attempt to explain why the idea of artificial consciousness is hard to understand, and how it’s possible for artificial consciousness to actually exist.