No-Go Theorems on Machine Consciousness
Journal of Artificial Intelligence and Consciousness October 31, 2023 Subhash C. Kak
Consciousness, often linked to free will, conflicts with the causal closure of physics, where every event has a physical cause. By analyzing nested physical systems, the paper argues that if a system had agency, observers could not exist within it. Since complex systems form nested hierarchies, this suggests consciousness cannot emerge from complexity alone. The existence of consciousness in cognitive agents implies it belongs to a non-physical dimension, making machine consciousness unattainable. These arguments are applied to reinterpret two quantum theory paradoxes relevant to quantum information theory.