One of the key problems the field of Machine Consciousness is currently facing is the need to accurately assess the potential level of consciousness that an artificial agent might develop. This paper presents a novel artificial consciousness scale designed to provide a pragmatic and intuitive reference in the evaluation of MC implementations. The version of ConsScale described in this work provides a comprehensive evaluation mechanism which enables the estimation of the potential degree of consciousness of most of the existing artificial (...) implementations. This scale offers both well defined levels of artificial consciousness and a method to calculate an orientative numerical score . A set of architectural and cognitive criteria is considered for each level of the scale. This permits the definition of a cognitive framework in which MC implementations can be ranked according to their potential capability to reproduce functional synergies associated with consciousness. The probability of the implementations having any phenomenal states related to the assessed functional synergy is not specifically addressed in this paper; nevertheless, it could be thoughtfully discussed elsewhere. (shrink)

The accurate measurement of the level of consciousness of a creature remains a major scientific challenge, nevertheless a number of new accounts that attempt to address this problem have been proposed recently. In this paper we analyze the principles of these new measures of consciousness along with other classical approaches focusing on their applicability to Machine Consciousness (MC). Furthermore, we propose a set of requirements of what we think a suitable measure for MC should be, discussing the associated theoretical and (...) practical issues. Using the proposed requirements as a framework for the design of an integrative measure of consciousness, we explore the possibility of designing such a measure in the context of current state of the art in consciousness studies. (shrink)