Scott Robinson

Douglas, Daniel, John Scott Robinson

These essays, culled from the author's lengthier volume, The Children of Babel, explore some of the inherent aspects of consciousness that might one day be embodied in artificial intelligence."Douglas, Daniel, John: An Infernal Chinese Room" revisits John Searle's famous thought experiment, as well as the reply of Douglas Hofstadter and Daniel Dennett (among others), 40 years on and in light of technology that has since emerged; "What Is It Like to Be Batman?" presents a new spin on Thomas Nagel's famous essay concerning the mind-body problem; and "Analogica: This and That and Strange Loops, Too" considers Hofstadter's more recent contributions to the nature of consciousness. Together, these pieces (and several others) form a profile of the study of consciousness today, against the backdrop of recent progress in AI and machine learning - with some provocative implications about whether truly conscious machines might be waiting in the near future.