Will machines ever be conscious?

Can a virtual hammer pound a physical nail?

Obviously not! Virtual hammers have no mass. They are not even physical objects!

But what if we reverse the question? Can a physical hammer pound a virtual nail?

This question is more interesting. It's not as simple as striking the computer screen with the hammer.

That would not change the position of the nail! It would just make the nail's position harder to see.

To move that virtual nail, we first need to have some knowledge about how its virtual realm is implemented inside the physical realm. In other words, we need to learn how to program. Then, using that physical hammer, we could carefully tap on the right keys to reprogram the position of that virtual nail.

Minds have a lot in common with virtual realms. For example, you can do things in your mind that would not be possible in the physical realm.

Physicalists believe minds are implemented within brains.

Not everyone agrees.

Idealists believe all of physics is implemented inside of a mind.

Dualists believe brains and minds are separate, but interact with each other.

And panpsychists believe mind is a part of physics scientists just haven't yet discovered.

Let's consider our question (will machines ever be conscious?) from each of these perspectives. I'll start with physicalism.

Many scientists align with physicalism. So many scientific theories assume the brain is like hardware, and the mind is like software.

If this is correct, can we make a physical machine have a subjective conscious experience?

The only limitation is knowledge. When we understand how the mental realm is implemented in the physical realm, that knowledge will empower us to make it happen in our machines too.

One reason many people struggle to imagine mere data processing creating a subjective conscious experience, is because data processing and subjective experiences occur in two different realms.

Data processing is physical.

Subjective experiences are mental.

But if the mental realm is implemented within the physical realm, we can manipulate it through physical adjustments.

Within your mind, suppose you are aware of some object.

In your physical brain, this corresponds with some kind of abstract data structure or model. It is encoded in electrical voltages and chemical signals across physical connections.

These data structures model or represent all the objects and experiences you imagine in your mind.

The data does not know whether it is being represented in a biological brain, or an advanced computer. It does not care whether its substrate evolved naturally or was designed synthetically.

The mind is defined by the data, not by the platform.

So if we know how, data processing is all that should be required to manipulate those data structures.

When we adjust those data structures, should we suppose feelings are induced in physics? Does changing data cause a subjective experience to occur in physics?

        {
          "species": "horse",
          "legs": 4,
          "color": "brown",
          "horn": false,
        }

Of course not! All that happened in physics was the manipulation of symbols!

        {
          "species": "horse",
          "legs": 4,
          "color": "purple",
          "horn": false,
        }

But remember, subjective experiences are not physical. They are mental. So from the perspective of the mind, something subjective did change.

And who notices this change? In a video game, there is also user watching the screen. But the brain is both the producer and consumer of the data structures it represents. It uses its models to plan future choices. And it assigns value to the states it anticipates passing though.

When it actually experiences similar states, it compares them against its expectations. This is how it learns to model its environment more accurately.

But minds rarely achieve perfect accuracy. We experience whatever our minds imagine, whether or not they accurately represents physics.

And those "real" experiences that you imagine are represented in data structures...

        {
          "species": "unicorn",
          "legs": 4,
          "color": "white",
          "horn": true,
        }

...that are made of physical symbols we can manipulate ...if, and only if, we know how.

In other words, the only hard problem is understanding how to manipulate the physical representations. After you understand that, manipulating subjective experiences is easy! It's the very same thing, just viewed from a mental perspective.

But that's just the physicalist perspective. what if the idealists are right, and physics is implemented inside of a great mind?

Well, then computers also exist inside of that same mind. Why are brains able to access that outer mind? Studying the brain is clearly the most direct way to find out.

What if the dualists are right, and mind is separate from physics?

In that case, we could record the information on the physical side of the connection. Then we could replay it to reconstruct the same subjective experience that was sent from a supernatural realm. So dualism cannot really stop machines from being conscious either.

And what if the panpsychists are right, and mind is a part of physics that hasn't yet been discovered?

In that case, computers already have some degree of consciousness, just by being physical. We just need to figure out how to combine small experiences to make bigger ones. And brains demonstrate how this is done.

No matter how you look at it, the only thing stopping machines from being conscious is a lack of knowledge about how physical brains work. And neuroscientists are gradually-but-steadily figuring that out.