Artificial minds and AI duplication: the very idea

The AI duplication thesis claims that AI systems which are identical to humans on an abstract functional level of description relevant to psychology and behaviour (‘AI duplicates’) are nomologically possible. First, we argue that the AI duplication thesis should be understood in terms of the identity of medium-independent computational properties, and that medium-independence should not be understood as a special case of multiple realisability. Second, thus understood, AI duplicates are indeed nomologically possible. In favour of the first, we show that the arguments against multiple realisability do not rule out that mental states are medium-independent computational states. In favour of the second, we show that the possibility of AI duplicates follows from the medium-independent character of computational properties, and the general ability to find equivalencies between medium-independent properties across systems. There are two key takeaways from our analysis. First, human minds are, to an important extent, independent of physical structure; very different kinds of materials, including of conventional AI, can function to implement their computational states. Second, we have removed one key obstacle to the view that artificial systems can have minds. If computational identity is sufficient for mental similarity/identity, then it would follow that AI systems can have minds.