An architecture for conscious machines is described here. This architecture is based on the author's consciousness studies, computer simulations and hardware development work. Actual microchips suitable for the implementation of this architecture are being developed.
The limitations of present-day AI seem to arise from the fact that computers do not really think or utilize meanings. To overcome these limitations it is argued that an advanced information processing machine should think in human fashion. It should have a flow of inner imagery and inner speech, which it could control in meaningful ways; it should be able to reason and imagine. It should utilize symbolic processing with meanings and significance in the human sense. Obviously this kind of machine could converse directly with humans and could also understand books, movies etc. without any artificial devices.
The proposed architecture is designed to comply with the requirements of perception, attention, match/mismatch/novelty detection, good-bad significance evaluation, system reactions, emotions, learning and introspection. Distributed signal representations are used with associative processing. Combinatorial explosion is avoided by the use of attention, controlled by match/mismatch situations and evaluated significance. The architecture supports the flow of inner speech and inner imagery. These and any sensory percepts form the instantaneous input to the machine.
The machine operates with grounded meanings and significance. The basic meanings of the signals are grounded to sensations, secondary meanings are attached by cross-associations. In this way the signal arrays can come to represent entities beyond their direct meanings.
This architecture supports an "immaterial mind". The meaning-carrying signal arrays are transparent to the machine. Therefore the machine "sees" only the carried meaning or modulation without any material carrier. The machine while able to report the mental content will not be able to report the existence of any carrying signals or material processes, hence the mental content will appear as immaterial mind.
Due to various cross-connections the machine is able to introspect its mental content and report it in various sensory terms, such as images and speech. This faculty is one of the hallmarks of consciousness, especially when taken together with the general operational way of the machine.