Will the crown of creation be placed on a new head? Conscious AI systems in the focus of technical developments.

Artificial intelligences are increasingly being installed in the political arena and are often portrayed in a human-like manner. The closer resemblance of such dialog-capable, semi-autonomous systems to humans and isolated demands for equality between robots and humans raises questions about the remaining differences in perspective. The concept of strong artificial intelligence is credited with not only imitating human-like behavior, but actually being able to perform it. In this context, the extent to which AI systems might eventually acquire their own consciousness is becoming increasingly interesting. To approach this question, we outline several basic categories for consciousness and basic scientific positions that attempt to locate and make consciousness accessible. In the meantime, technology assessment has recognized and taken up this topic.