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The hardest part of creating conscious AI might be convincing ourselves it’s real

By David Cornell, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, University of Lancashire

As far back as 1980, the American philosopher John Searle distinguished between strong and weak AI. Weak AIs are merely useful machines or programs that help us solve problems, whereas strong AIs would have genuine intelligence. A strong AI would be conscious.

Searle was sceptical of the very possibility of strong AI, but not everyone shares his pessimism. Most optimistic are those who endorse functionalism,…

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