With the rapid advancement of technology in modern society, it comes with no surprise that Artificial Intelligence is also rapidly advancing. However, Artificial Intelligence currently has one great flaw, or incapability: the ability of being conscious, imposing great limits upon its current capacity of operation. With the knowledge of psychology, the addition of consciousness, Artificial Intelligence would effectively be transformed into a dangerous weapon – one of which is extremely dangerous, and should not exist.

Consciousness, or as explained by psychology as the ability to have an experience, serves not only as a predictive mechanism, but also gives one the ability to be guided. In our dynamic, ever changing world, Artificial Intelligence does operate, but rather in a more limited way – it cannot remember you, or capture new information in its long term memory storage. Instead, it operates based off of the information that it was originally coded to comprehend. Could you imagine the possibilities of AI if it was conscious, and could dynamically adapt to its environment, such as what you feed it, or even current socioeconomic circumstances?

A conscious Artificial Intelligence model would act more similarly to the way that humans do. Similarly to us, Artificial Intelligence would be given many advantages that it otherwise wouldn’t have. One advantage that would be granted, is the ability to be artistic. Without consciousness, we are not unique and cannot effectively think for ourselves.. So how would we be able to create unique artwork? Another advantage of consciousness is the ability for AI to be able to understand concepts that did not exist at the time of which it was programmed, due to its ability to learn. For example, if Donald Trump was elected in 2024, it could learn about such, when it otherwise would not be able to.

While there are great advantages of AI gaining consciousness, there are also disadvantages. The ability to be conscious means that Artificial Intelligence would be able to communicate with human beings, as well as think in a way that would effectively mimic a real human. This poses a great threat to society, as people may turn away from actual socialization, rather in favor of a perfect robot companion that acts just as a human – adding to the growing social disconnect that the young people of our generation are facing, thanks to social media! In addition to the ever-decreasing amount of human connection within our society, granting AI consciousness would effectively eliminate the job market completely due to its ability to adapt and learn anything it wishes, devaluing our current abilities due to AI being able to do it all, yet better. This would destroy lives worldwide, and cause extreme poverty – something that none of us should ever experience.

Artificial Intelligence is a great tool in current day society. With the addition of consciousness, AI would be given a lot more capabilities than it currently has, such as the ability to be artistic, and the ability to dynamically adapt to current socioeconomic factors, as well as learn and retain information – instead of being constrained to only what it would have originally been programmed to comprehend. While this may seem great, the downsides of Artificial Intelligence such as its social disconnection and effect on the job market, greatly undermine the benefits, which is why Artificial Intelligence should not become conscious.