Beyond Zero and One (Andrew Smart) / quote 116 of 171
The self-model model of consciousness
The current thinking in AI is that consciousness is a self-model, which is a device (or mental model) that a machine or human uses to answer questions about how it interacts with the world. Dennett, for example, argues that the evolution of the self-model was driven by the evolution of language. So a system that has a self-model can ask itself questions about how it works and somehow represent knowledge. I would like to point out, though, that the idea of a self-model is also a model—the self-model model of consciousness.