Do Robots powered by a Quantum Processor have the Freedom to swerve?

Abstract

Any scientific attempt to explain consciousness is tasked with reconciling the third person objective perspective of science with our first person subjective experience of the world. A good point of departure is to consider situations in which these two perspectives are correlated. We note that behaviors conducive to our well-being, i.e. conducive to maintaining homeostasis, tend to be associated with feelings of pleasure while actions that threaten our homeostasis tend to coincide with unpleasant feelings. We choose a materialist/physicalist approach and find the simplest explanation for this correlation arises from the assumption that we possess agency. If a system has the agency to choose an outcome then presumably it would choose a pleasant over an unpleasant one. Agency implementing preferences manifests itself as a force in a third person theory. If a preference is strong it gives rise to a force causing a deterministic evolution, while weak preferences give rise to non-deterministic evolutions. Quantum physics assigns a high degree of non-determinism to large systems of qubits, a Knightian uncertainty, in which one can not even assign probabilities to observed outcomes. This can give engineered systems the freedom to act on their preferences in ways not always predictable by an outside observer. Our considerations lead us to propose a three part design for an engineered animat for which one may provocatively argue that it is conscious and possesses agency and feelings.