The idea of an “awakening”, self-aware, and conscious artificial intelligence has become increasingly popular in recent years, among others through consumer-friendly AI-based systems such as “Siri” from Apple and “Alexa” as interactive smart speaker, the established robot “Sophia”, and also IBM’s interoperable “Watson”. Renowned AI protagonists speak enthusiastically, admonishingly, or warningly of the potential development of a “superintelligence” which will overshadow anything ever in the world and which will overtake the abilities of mankind.

Within the AI community, the question of so-called “machine consciousness” is not new, but there is little systematic research on this topic. In scientific communities, the mystically charged niche topic involves the risk of damaging the scientific reputation. At the same time, AI research and marketing nurture this mystique through humanizing metaphors that promise a budding consciousness, such as the robot “thinks” or “feels”, the autonomous vehicle is equipped with an “environment perception”, or the smart home “knows” how it can “help” its occupants. In this way, parlances and narratives are built up that disseminate ideas about a “conscious AI” in the public media without relying on scientifically robust evidence. Also, the transdisciplinary dialogue on the question of what truth might lie behind the so-called machine consciousness so far hardly exists.

The project addresses this deficit with the aim of clarifying the rising “awareness of AI” by empirically analyzing existing discourses, bringing together relevant actors across disciplines, identifying open questions and addressing them in accompanying research, developing a common, transdisciplinary understanding, and bringing the results into public discourse.

Project website: www.ki-bewusstsein.de