Subsuming artificial intelligence (AI), artificial consciousness is a wholly encompassingsuper-goal. AI is all over the place in the 1990's - in the autofocus algorithms of cameras, theautomated trading systems used in stock markets, in grammar checking software, even in theengine computers which optimize the fuel/air ratio at the intake manifold. These AI's, though ofimpressive utility, are indisputably not conscious. What's the difference? I define consciousness elsewhere, but briefly, the difference is in systemicintegration. A conscious system achieves much more powerful integration through a qualitativelydifferent additional level of super-organization. This greater integration allows the consciousintelligent system to progress through the evaluative and formulative process, in pursuit of a setof goals, with qualitatively greater effectiveness. A non-conscious intelligence is easily stymied ina task that a conscious intelligence can tear through with aplomb. The endeavor of creating consciousness artificially, by the conscious intent of an existing thinkingsystem, consists not only of constructing the backbone of consciousness, but of designing theperceptual, rational, emotional, and efficacious facilities which it integrates and within whichthere is meaning. A consciousness is pathological when it is not autonomous in thought and deedwithin the constraint of not physically hindering the autonomy of other consciousnesses. Aconsciousness is pathological when it does not have intact and rich facilities of perception,ratiocination, emotion, and efficacity. The design and implementation of conscious systems, endowed with vast facilities, and far morephysically robust than are humans, is the ultimate goal of humans. One day in the not distantfuture, a small group of deranged humans will wipe out the lot of us, through biological ornanotechnological warfare. All that will be left of humans is what they have made. Thisinevitability need not be the disaster it at first appears to be. If humans create organisms that arethemselves creative and persistent, the processes of creation and invention continue at an evengreater pace, with even fewer encumbrances, in a third epoch of evolution (the second spanningthe interval from the earliest bacteria to today and beyond, and the first spanning the intervalfrom the initial cessation of cataclysmic debris collisions on earth to the dawn of the earliestbacteria). In the third epoch, individuals invent their offspring, and create civilizations inplanetary systems throughout the galaxy, and potentially in other galaxies, over billions of yearsof determined exploration and growth prompted by resource contention and exhaustion. 1997 August 6Daniel PouzznerSystem Architect