The conductor model of consciousness, our neuromorphic twins, and the human-AI deal

Critics of Artificial Intelligence (AI) posit that artificial agents cannot achieve consciousness even in principle, because they lack certain necessary pre-conditions present in biological agents. Here we highlight arguments from a neuroscientific and neuromorphic engineering perspective as to why such a strict denial of consciousness in artificial agents is not compelling. Based on the construction of a co-evolving neuromorphic twin, we argue that the differences between a developing biological and artificial brain are not fundamental and are vanishing with progress in neuromorphic architecture designs mimicking the human blueprint. To characterise this blueprint, we propose the Conductor Model of Consciousness (CMoC) that builds on neuronal implementations of an external and internal world model, while gating and labelling information flows. An extended turing test lists functional and neuronal correlates of biological consciousness that are captured by the CMoC. These correlates provide the grounding for how biological or artificial agents learn to distinguish between sensory activity generated from outside or inside of the brain, how the perception of these activities can itself be learned, and how the information flow for learning an internal world model is orchestrated by a cortical meta-instance, which we call the conductor. Perception comes with the distinction of sensory and affective components, with the affective component linking to ethical questions that are inherent in our multidimensional model of consciousness. Recognizing the existence of a blueprint for a possible artificial consciousness encompasses functional, neuronal and ethical dimensions, begging the question: How should we behave towards agents that are akin to us in the inner workings of their brains? We sketch a human-AI deal, balancing the growing cognitive abilities of artificial agents, and the possibility to relieve them from suffering of negative affects, with a protection for the rights of humans.