The XXI century: consciousness and the brain

Abstract

The most remarkable result of human creativity in the XXI century is the development of creative android robots equipped with artificial intelligence. The rate of progress made in developing these robots is so fast that it will soon be impossible to distinguish robots from human beings in appearance features. Searching for the difference between humans and robots (tests by A. Turing, J. Searle, etc.) gives rise to a host of difficult questions concerning the common understanding of the definition of the term “consciousness”. However, the similarities between humans and robots can lead to a logical error, i.e., to substitution of actual reality for virtual reality.