Critique of Strong Artificial Intelligence’s Project from the Perspective of I. Kant’s Theoretical Philosophy

Abstract

What is a strong AI? What fundamental problems are on the way to its cre­ation? Contemporary philosophers usually associate strong AI with self-conscious­ness and consciousness in general. Consciousness is given to us only within human experience, so any model of it is a verbal-descriptive structure, which is conditioned, on the one hand, by the problem of the ontological status of human consciousness, on the other hand, by the possibilities of human cognition. If the answer to the ques­tion about the ontological status of consciousness determines the strategy of imple­menting strong AI, then the establishment of the boundaries of self-cognition determ­ines the very possibility of creating strong AI. Taking into account the fact that Kant’s “Copernican turn” laid a new foundation in determining the boundaries of cognition, it is crucial to refer to his theoretical philosophy to determine the range of problems that stand in the way of creating a strong AI. The article shows why strategies for im­plementing strong AI depend on solving the ontological status of human conscious­ness. To solve this problem, I reconstruct the core concepts of Kantian theory of con­sciousness, such as self-consciousness, inner feeling, pure apperception, and self-affirmation, and place them in the context of contemporary consciousness research; I consider the compatibility of the Kantian position and functionalism and point out those fundamental limitations that act as obstacles to the creation of strong AI. Based on the Kantian critique of the features of self-knowledge, I conclude that it is im­possible to approach the creation of a strong AI because of the fundamental limita­tions of our cognitive abilities.