Welp, that does it. Pack it up, Cognitive Scientists: we've solved the hard problem of consciousness right here on HN. What you're describing is what's been pr

Welp, that does it. Pack it up, Cognitive Scientists: we've solved the hard problem of consciousness right here on HN. What you're describing is what's been proposed by Giulio Tonini as "Integrated Information Theory" (IIT) [1]. I quite like the framework and the math behind it is beautiful. Unfortunately, it hasn't been supported well empirically. Re: AI, IIT actually gives basis for AI not being conscious. Not to mention that all conscious systems we can currently observe are dynamic/continuous, not discrete. The difference there is qualitative—there's no reason to assume that because a dynamic system is conscious that a discrete system approximating it is conscious too. [1: https://www.nature.com/articles/nrn.2016.44 https://www.nature.com/articles/nrn.2016.44]