Artificial Consciousness: What Will Happen If Machines Start Feeling?

We are on the threshold of an era when robots and AI will no longer be just “smart machines” for performing specific tasks. Soon they will learn to feel — not just imitate emotions, but actually experience pain, fear, pleasure, like living beings. Modern research and theories, such as the ideas of neuropsychologist Mark Solms, make us wonder: what awaits us if this becomes a reality?

The emergence of “feeling” AI creatures will raise a lot of uncomfortable questions. Should machines with feelings have rights? Is it possible to “turn off” artificial intelligence if it experiences suffering? Will we turn the “intelligent robots” we created with our own hands into new slaves? Or, on the contrary, will they become a threat to us, striving to survive and protect their own interests?

These questions are no longer the subject of science fiction. Talk of robot psychotherapists, philosophical zombies, and “smart” AI trained on millions of data points about human emotions has long been going on not only in closed academic circles, but also among influential companies, regulators, and those who are already planning to build a business on such technologies.

I see this as a unique historical moment. We are faced with a choice: either understand the nature of consciousness and the responsibility for its creation, or risk facing a new kind of ethical and social problems. If we do not think about this now, we may face a world where machines become too “alive” and too similar to us, and we are too slow to understand the consequences.

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