On Necessity of Conscious Learning: From Robots to Humans

Background: This is a position paper as a companion paper for the keynote talk at the same conference SAMDE 2024. This paper is about the necessity of understanding conscious learning for humans and machines. Conscious learning is the main subject of the keynote talk. Problem: The necessity of conscious learning for Natural General Intelligence (NGI) and Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). Approach: Since Conscious Learning has been published as cited in the paper, this paper does not explain Conscious Learning per se and its algorithm, but instead proposes and proves a theorem about the necessity of conscious learning for humans and machines. The paper further explains the importance of this necessity by discussing the potential impact in three application domains—human governance, science & technology, and international relations. Contribution: The new position is that understanding conscious learning is necessary for humans and machines in the three domains. This work casts major problems in the three domains on the scientific basis—consciousness, beyond a subjective, eclectic, or political basis. Detailed evidence about the events discussed here is referred to Weng et al. v. NSF, ACM, AAAS, SNG, Alphabet, the United States District Court for the Western District of Michigan (Civil Action No. 1:22-cv-998) and the United States Court of Appeal for the 6th Circuit (Civil Action No, 23-1567).