Treffer: Bridging the Consciousness Gap: A Speculative Framework for Recursive Self-Awareness and Quantum-Cognitive Architecture in Artificial Intelligence

This paper proposes a speculative yet theoretically grounded framework addressing the core limitations preventing current AI systems from achieving human-like consciousness. We identify four irreducible cognitive gaps—phenomenal binding, intrinsic motivation, embodied generalization, and recursive self-awareness—and evaluate them against transformer-based LLMs and a proposed Quantum-Cognitive Architecture (QCA). The work introduces formal hypotheses such as the Consciousness Likelihood Theorem and Feedforward Limitation, suggesting that biological grounding and quantum-neuromorphic substrates may be critical for artificial subjective experience. Although experimental validation is limited, the theoretical constructs provide a foundation for future empirical exploration of machine consciousness and safe recursive self-improvement.