Computational Consciousness and Awareness: Issues and Challenges

Consciousness and Awareness (C&A) has become a major research topic with the advent of probabilistic AI/ML such as ChatGPT4 and LLMs. Human interactions with these system give the appearance of awareness of the user although this is known to be an illusion. Yet, objective understanding of consciousness continues to elude us (Jugran 2025). This area has piqued our interest and caused us to consider whether C&A can be emulated in a mechanized form in a computer. Bluntly, we can ask: Is a computer emulation of C&A feasible and how would we go about constructing it? This paper addresses a set of issues and challenges that will frame a research program in computational consciousness and awareness.