We propose a multi-agent framework for modeling artificial consciousness in large language models (LLMs), grounded in psychoanalytic theory. Our \textbf{Psychodynamic Model} simulates self-awareness, preconsciousness, and unconsciousness through agent interaction, guided by a Personalization Module combining fixed traits and dynamic needs. Using parameter-efficient fine-tuning on emotionally rich dialogues, the system was evaluated across eight personalized conditions. An LLM as a judge approach showed a 71.2\% preference for the fine-tuned model, with improved emotional depth and reduced output variance, demonstrating its potential for adaptive, personalized cognition.

Human consciousness is still a concept hard to define with current scientific understanding. Although Large Language Models (LLMs) have recently demonstrated significant advancements across various domains including translation and summarization, human consciousness is not something to imitate with current upfront technology owing to so-called hallucination. This study, therefore, proposes a novel approach to address these challenges by integrating psychoanalysis and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) into constructing consciousness and personality modules. We developed three artificial consciousnesses (self-awareness, unconsciousness, and preconsciousness) based on the principles of psychoanalysis. Additionally, we designed 16 characters with different personalities representing the sixteen MBTI types, with several attributes such as needs, status, and memories. To determine if our model's artificial consciousness exhibits human-like cognition, we created ten distinct situations considering seven attributes such as emotional understanding and logical thinking. The decision-making process of artificial consciousness and the final action were evaluated in three ways: survey evaluation, three-tier classification via ChatGPT, and qualitative review. Both quantitative and qualitative analyses indicated a high likelihood of well-simulated consciousness, although the difference in response between different characters and consciousnesses was not very significant. This implies that the developed models incorporating elements of psychoanalysis and personality theory can lead to building a more intuitive and adaptable AI system with humanoid consciousness. Therefore, this study contributes to opening up new avenues for improving AI interactions in complex cognitive contexts.

A new study by researchers at MIT and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) suggests the day may be approaching when advanced artificial intelligence systems could assist anesthesiologists in the operating room. In a special edition of Artificial Intelligence in Medicine, the team of neuroscientists, engineers, and physicians demonstrated a machine learning algorithm for continuously automating dosing of the anesthetic drug propofol. Using an application of deep reinforcement learning, in which the software's neural networks simultaneously learned how its dosing choices maintain unconsciousness and how to critique the efficacy of its own actions, the algorithm outperformed more traditional software in sophisticated, physiology-based simulations of patients. It also closely matched the performance of real anesthesiologists when showing what it would do to maintain unconsciousness given recorded data from nine real surgeries. The algorithm's advances increase the feasibility for computers to maintain patient unconsciousness with no more drug than is needed, thereby freeing up anesthesiologists for all the other responsibilities they have in the operating room, including making sure patients remain immobile, experience no pain, remain physiologically stable, and receive adequate oxygen, say co-lead authors Gabe Schamberg and Marcus Badgeley.

Anesthestic drugs act on the brain, but most anesthesiologists rely on heart rate, respiratory rate, and movement to infer whether surgery patients remain unconscious to the desired degree. In a new study, a research team based at MIT and Massachusetts General Hospital shows that a straightforward artificial intelligence approach, attuned to the kind of anesthetic being used, can yield algorithms that assess unconsciousness in patients based on brain activity with high accuracy and reliability. "One of the things that is foremost in the minds of anesthesiologists is'Do I have somebody who is lying in front of me who may be conscious and I don't realize it?' Being able to reliably maintain unconsciousness in a patient during surgery is fundamental to what we do," says senior author Emery N. Brown, the Edward Hood Taplin Professor in The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory and the Institute for Medical Engineering and Science at MIT, and an anesthesiologist at MGH. "This is an important step forward." More than providing a good readout of unconsciousness, Brown adds, the new algorithms offer the potential to allow anesthesiologists to maintain it at the desired level while using less drug than they might administer when depending on less direct, accurate, and reliable indicators.

Drug- and patient-specific electroencephalographic (EEG) signatures of anesthesia-induced unconsciousness have been identified previously. We applied machine learning approaches to construct classification models for real-time tracking of unconscious state during anesthesia-induced unconsciousness. We used cross-validation to select and train the best performing models using 33,159 2s segments of EEG data recorded from 7 healthy volunteers who received increasing infusions of propofol while responding to stimuli to directly assess unconsciousness. Cross-validated models of unconsciousness performed very well when tested on 13,929 2s EEG segments from 3 left-out volunteers collected under the same conditions (median volunteer AUCs 0.99-0.99). Models showed strong generalization when tested on a cohort of 27 surgical patients receiving solely propofol collected in a separate clinical dataset under different circumstances and using different hardware (median patient AUCs 0.95-0.98),

Reinforcement Learning (RL) can be used to fit a mapping from patient state to a medication regimen. Prior studies have used deterministic and value-based tabular learning to learn a propofol dose from an observed anesthetic state. Deep RL replaces the table with a deep neural network and has been used to learn medication regimens from registry databases. Here we perform the first application of deep RL to closed-loop control of anesthetic dosing in a simulated environment. We use the cross-entropy method to train a deep neural network to map an observed anesthetic state to a probability of infusing a fixed propofol dosage. During testing, we implement a deterministic policy that transforms the probability of infusion to a continuous infusion rate. The model is trained and tested on simulated pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic models with randomized parameters to ensure robustness to patient variability. The deep RL agent significantly outperformed a proportional-integral-derivative controller (median absolute performance error 1.7% +/- 0.6 and 3.4% +/- 1.2). Modeling continuous input variables instead of a table affords more robust pattern recognition and utilizes our prior domain knowledge. Deep RL learned a smooth policy with a natural interpretation to data scientists and anesthesia care providers alike.

Humans have learned to travel through space, eradicate diseases and understand nature at the breathtakingly tiny level of fundamental particles. Yet we have no idea how consciousness – our ability to experience and learn about the world in this way and report it to others – arises in the brain. In fact, while scientists have been preoccupied with understanding consciousness for centuries, it remains one of the most important unanswered questions of modern neuroscience. Now our new study, published in Science Advances, sheds light on the mystery by uncovering networks in the brain that are at work when we are conscious. Humans have learned to travel through space, eradicate diseases and understand nature at the breathtakingly tiny level of fundamental particles.