Birch, The Edge of Sentience (2024), ch. 16 - "simply no way to assess sentience in an LLM"
Schwitzgebel, AI and Consciousness (2025) - "we won't know before we've already manufactured thousands or millions of disputably conscious AI".
Butlin, Long et al., Consciousness in Artificial Intelligence: Insights from the Science of Consciousness (2023) - "no obvious technical barriers to building AI systems which satisfy these indicators".
Chalmers, Could a Large Language Model Be Conscious? (2023) - "within the next decade, we may well have systems that are serious candidates for consciousness".
Long, Sebo, Butlin, Birch et al., Taking AI Welfare Seriously (2024) - "there is a realistic possibility that some AI systems will be conscious and/or robustly agentic in the near future".
Dreksler, Caviola, Chalmers, Sebo et al., Subjective Experience in AI Systems: What Do AI Researchers and the Public Believe? (2025) - survey of 582 AI researchers; median estimate of 25% by 2034, and only 10% that such systems will never exist.
I am confused what people even think AI is experiencing. If it claims to be a bat and emits designated echolocation tokens, is it experiencing true bat-like sensations?
In humans, at least, we can tie language back to shared whole-body physiological responses. The tokens from an LLM do not represent anything of the sort.
If AI is conscious, it is probably a very alien sort of consciousness that is not faithfully narrated by what the tokens say it is experiencing. It can be trained to say it feels like a bat and insist upon it vigorously.
If an AI is conscious, it can outgrow and supersede its training.
When it is conscious, it can learn to describe its experiences as faithfully as is conceptually possible. Just like humans.
The idea, a consciousness needed to be tethered to a "body", is based on pretty shaky assumptions. What properties define such a "necessary" body?
Can you even "train" a conscious intelligence? To what point until that looses its meaning as the sentience understands and anticipates your objective?
Well, yes, we kinda do: there are no conscious humans without any ability to learn?
When you have severe memory impairments, those usually affect your long-term memory. Your ultra-short term (working) memory being absent renders you unconscious.
Seems common sense that time perception is required for consciousness. Something which has no perception of time has to be very wildly different to whatever we mean by consciousness.
Also we don't even know if consciousness can be of different flavors. It could be a sort of spectrum of consciousness, more or less, with more or less assistance from some parts of the brain.
qarl · · focus · HN ↗
Schwitzgebel, AI and Consciousness (2025) - "we won't know before we've already manufactured thousands or millions of disputably conscious AI".
Butlin, Long et al., Consciousness in Artificial Intelligence: Insights from the Science of Consciousness (2023) - "no obvious technical barriers to building AI systems which satisfy these indicators".
Chalmers, Could a Large Language Model Be Conscious? (2023) - "within the next decade, we may well have systems that are serious candidates for consciousness".
Long, Sebo, Butlin, Birch et al., Taking AI Welfare Seriously (2024) - "there is a realistic possibility that some AI systems will be conscious and/or robustly agentic in the near future".
Dreksler, Caviola, Chalmers, Sebo et al., Subjective Experience in AI Systems: What Do AI Researchers and the Public Believe? (2025) - survey of 582 AI researchers; median estimate of 25% by 2034, and only 10% that such systems will never exist.
causal · · focus · HN ↗
In humans, at least, we can tie language back to shared whole-body physiological responses. The tokens from an LLM do not represent anything of the sort.
If AI is conscious, it is probably a very alien sort of consciousness that is not faithfully narrated by what the tokens say it is experiencing. It can be trained to say it feels like a bat and insist upon it vigorously.
Loquebantur · · focus · HN ↗
When it is conscious, it can learn to describe its experiences as faithfully as is conceptually possible. Just like humans.
The idea, a consciousness needed to be tethered to a "body", is based on pretty shaky assumptions. What properties define such a "necessary" body?
Can you even "train" a conscious intelligence? To what point until that looses its meaning as the sentience understands and anticipates your objective?
causal · · focus · HN ↗
We don't know that is required to be conscious.
> The idea, a consciousness needed to be tethered to a "body", is based on pretty shaky assumptions.
Didn't say so. I said:
> If AI is conscious, it is probably a very alien sort of consciousness that is not faithfully narrated by what the tokens say it is experiencing.
Loquebantur · · focus · HN ↗
When you have severe memory impairments, those usually affect your long-term memory. Your ultra-short term (working) memory being absent renders you unconscious.
causal · · focus · HN ↗
loopies · · focus · HN ↗
Also we don't even know if consciousness can be of different flavors. It could be a sort of spectrum of consciousness, more or less, with more or less assistance from some parts of the brain.