Recently, the IAI released Bernardo Kastrup’s piece, ‘The Lunacy of "Machine Consciousness"' where he reflected on a recent disagreement with Susan Schneider at January’s IAI Live debate ‘Consciousness in the machine’. Susan Schneider responds to Bernardo Kastrup’s critique of her position, and argues for the ‘wait and see’ approach to machine consciousness.

The idea of conscious AI doesn’t strike me as conceptually or logically impossible—we can understand Asimov’s robot stories, for instance. I’ve discussed this matter in detail after mulling over various philosophical thought experiments. This doesn’t mean conscious machines will walk the Earth or even that synthetic consciousness even exists in the universe. For an idea can be logically consistent and conceptually coherent but still be technologically unfeasible.

Instead, I take a Wait and See Approach: we do not currently have sufficient information to determine whether AI consciousness will exist on Earth or elsewhere in the universe. Consider the following: