The Role of TCS in Understanding (AI) Consciousness

The Conscious Turing Machine (CTM) is inspired by Alan Turing’s simple yet powerful model of computation and Bernard Baars’ theater model of consciousness. As in TCS, resource limitations are taken into account. Though extremely simple, the model (1) aligns at a high level with many of the major scientific theories of human and animal consciousness, (2) provides explanations at a high level for many phenomena associated with consciousness, (3) gives insight into how a machine can have subjective consciousness, and (4) is clearly buildable. This combination supports our claim that machine consciousness is not only plausible but inevitable.