Machine consciousness (MC), also known as artificial consciousness (AC) or synthetic consciousness, is a branch of AI and cognitive robotics. 

Cyberneticians in the 1960s and neural network analysts in the early 1990s were interested in the idea that consciousness is a property of a well-specified machine. Moreover, artificial consciousness theory aims to "define what if we discovered consciousness in an engineered item." 

The evolution of AI has been rapid, and it has applications in a wide range of industries. From retail to manufacturing to banking and financial services, artificial intelligence algorithms target individuals' wants and aspirations and improve user experience, efficiency, and safety.

What is artificial narrow intelligence?

"Weak AI" is what most people call "Artificial Narrow Intelligence." Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI) is the part of AI that is most common today. Even though these "intelligent" machines have made a lot of progress and, in some cases, are even better than humans at specific tasks, they are "weak" because they can only act intelligently in limited situations and with a lot of restrictions.

Artificial narrow intelligence can learn to be very good at doing a specific, well-defined task, but it can't do anything else. We can't use it for anything else because of its "intelligence."

What is Artificial General Intelligence?

Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), also known as "Strong AI," is the other type of AI. This intelligence is the next step in artificial intelligence.

AGI machines can watch and learn, but they can also use what they've learned in areas they don't know much. Unfortunately, even though this kind of intelligence is fundamental to humans and other living things and is present in the early stages of development, we still haven't made a machine that can do it.

How is artificial consciousness different?

Artificial consciousness (AC) is one step beyond AGI. It means more than just intelligence; it means having feelings and being self-aware. So even though our smart kitchen appliances probably don't need more consciousness, Artificial Consciousness could be helpful in a voice assistant or humanoid robot that interacts with humans.

Consciousness is more complex to measure than intelligence, with an IQ score. It is figuring out if artificial consciousness will be more of a philosophical question than a technical one. There are many different ideas about consciousness, which affect when it might be possible to create artificial consciousness.

Will artificial consciousness become real?

There is still no agreed-upon date for when artificial consciousness might be possible. Artificial consciousness is hard to predict because we don't yet know how to make the technological leaps needed to create it.

In his book "Architects of Intelligence," futurist and writer Martin Ford talks to several well-known AI experts and asks them when there is at least a 50% chance that artificial general intelligence, not even artificial consciousness, will be built. Some people, like Rodney Brooks, who helped start iRobot, were not as optimistic and said 2200.

It is hard to create artificial consciousness because we need to know a lot about consciousness and how it works in the brain, especially from a scientific point of view. The debate has primarily about from a philosophical point of view. Still, recently neuroscience has become interested in consciousness and seems determined to figure out how it happens in a physical sense.

Conclusion

There is no one way to measure a machine's intelligence or one way to define intelligence. As with consciousness, there are many ways to look at this. Legg and Hutter wrote a report that looked at over seventy different definitions of intelligence. These ways showed many different ways to define intelligence depending on the field and subject matter.

Still, when talking about AI and artificial consciousness, humans and their natural intelligence are the "gold standard." A machine is smart if it can solve problems, similar to how humans' intelligence is measured by how well they can solve problems. The more challenging these problems are, the smarter the machine is thought to be. Moreover, if a machine can solve specific problems better than a person, it can be thought of as more intelligent in that area, but that doesn't mean it's smart in all ways. Maybe the way intelligence is defined now is too narrow and needs to be changed.