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.
“AI researcher” seems like a fairly broad category. People who primarily think about CNNs and transformers probably spend about as much time considering the problem of consciousness as any other educated person, which is not very much time. With this in mind, it’s not surprising most of the AI researcher predictions do not differ much from what the Public predicts here. And for this, it’s not clear what explanatory value this survey has other than to reveal minor biases the AI researchers may have.
It matters little. Inevitably some system will be developed which has a high degree of autonomy and mimics the functioning of a person extremely well. Anyone aware that there is a conceptual difference between phenomenal consciousness and intelligence will get shouted down.
I do find it strange that 50% of ai researchers and the public seem to think there will be a way of determining if these systems are conscious. There’s no evidence for this at this point that there ever will be such a test.
> I do find it strange that 50% of ai researchers and the public seem to think there will be a way of determining if these systems are conscious.
I think it's likely they're using a different definition than you. Seeing as there is no agreed upon definition, after all.
Regardless - I post this list because the article makes a bold claim at the beginning - and I wanted to demonstrate that in fact there is no consensus.
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.
GPerson · · focus · HN ↗
It matters little. Inevitably some system will be developed which has a high degree of autonomy and mimics the functioning of a person extremely well. Anyone aware that there is a conceptual difference between phenomenal consciousness and intelligence will get shouted down.
I do find it strange that 50% of ai researchers and the public seem to think there will be a way of determining if these systems are conscious. There’s no evidence for this at this point that there ever will be such a test.
qarl · · focus · HN ↗
I think it's likely they're using a different definition than you. Seeing as there is no agreed upon definition, after all.
Regardless - I post this list because the article makes a bold claim at the beginning - and I wanted to demonstrate that in fact there is no consensus.
GPerson · · focus · HN ↗
[deleted] · · focus · HN ↗
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qarl · · focus · HN ↗