If machines with consciousness are created, they would be living machines, that is, variations on life forms as we know them, says Subhash Kak, Professor of Electrical Engineering at Louisiana State University.

The material world is not causally closed, and consciousness influences its evolution. Matter and minds complement each other. At the level of the individual, even medical science that is strongly based on the machine paradigm has now acknowledged the influence of mind on body. At a more abstract level, it is being argued that even if machines can be conscious, now that this property has emerged through increasing complexity of life-forms, humans will eventually create silicon machines with minds that will slowly spread all over the world, and the entire universe will eventually become a conscious machine.