Consciousness - what does it mean?

I got an interesting question from theo regarding the Blue Brain post:

"What, do you think, does it mean to become [artificially] conscious at the level of a human brain?"

I thought about this and have some thoughts. To become conscious means 3 things -

1) Being able to acknowledge your own existence
2) Being able to have a change of opinion
3) Being able to have an irrational bias

What do you think it means?

Blue Brain

This is something that I think is really cool!

IBM and a Swiss company called EPFL together have started a project to recreate the human brain in computer form. Its name is Blue Brain. This new supercomputer, if everything goes well, may become conscious at the level of a human brain in ten years.

It may take longer than that, or the project could completely crash and burn. Whether it is a success or a failure, it is still the closest we will have come to artificial intelligence yet.

Just imagine being brought into existence and being told that you're a computer, you're a one of a kind, you're an experiment, and that everyone else is made of flesh and bones...and you aren't.

For more information, go to the Blue Brain homepage.