A Non-equilibrium Thermodynamic Framework of Consciousness

Consciousness continues to be of one of the most important, interesting and complex question to focus upon. While the study of consciousness has a long and rich history in the field of philosophy, the scientific study of consciousness has become less taboo recently, and made tremendous progress in the field over the last couple of decades, due to significant contributions from disciplines like neuroscience, cognitive science and computer science. Though research interests have continued to grow, fueled by the recent artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) revolution (reigniting questions around artificial consciousness), the topic of consciousness itself has generally been ignored or dismissed by a majority of those who work in mainstream AI as either an unimportant factor for their research goals or accusing work in (artificial) consciousness as distracting flights of fantasy. It seems as this trend might change in the near future as leaders in the field of AI recognize the importance of mechanisms of higher level cognition for making progress in AI, their relationship to the'easy problems' of consciousness and the important work that has been conducted in the field of cognitive science to understand these better (Yoshua Bengio's keynote address at NEURIPS 2019 being an important example of this [1]). While this might not satisfy those who are interested in the phenomenal aspects of our conscious experience, it represents a step forward in the right direction by the larger AI community. In keeping with the (beginnings of a) trend, the author will look to make the case for a non-equilibrium thermodynamic framework of consciousness, it's relationship to the field of AI and the crucial role that computer hardware engineers might have to play in the scientific study of consciousness. The author would like to take a brief moment (to digress) and explain the journey towards these ideas, hoping that it would elucidate their motivations as an engineer to study and understand the field of consciousness from a more physics based approach. The author's primary research interests lie in the field of artificial intelligence and was lucky