About computing consciousness

Fascinating and ambitious.

Giulio Tononi, a neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin, argued that consciousness can be measured—captured in a single value that he calls Φ, the Greek letter phi. […]
An interesting consequence of the theory, at least as Tononi and Koch have articulated it, is that anything with a phi greater than zero possesses at least a shred of consciousness. By that definition, many organisms, and even some computers, are conscious by virtue of the ways they integrate information.[1]

  1. Full article “How Much Consciousness Does An iPhone Have?” by Gary Marcus | The New Yorker  ↩