# AI Consciousness **URL:** \ **Category:** Philosophy of Mind\ **Tags:** ai\ **Created:** [May 10, 2026, 1:18pm UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/ai-consciousness/959 "2026-05-10T13:18:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Patterner](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex007/user_avatar/www.thephilosophyforum.com/patterner/32/192_2.png) [@Patterner](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Patterner)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2026, 5:43pm UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/ai-consciousness/959/65 "2026-05-17T17:43:01Z")
> [@Andy](#): > > Seth mentions the importance of an internal representation of the outside world, as though this accounts for consciousness, but even given the importance of such a representation the question remains as to why there should be any consciousness of it. Yes, this is always the question. Patterns of neural energy represent the electromagnetic radiation of certain frequencies that got our retinas. But we experience the sight of red. How does that happen? My guess is that consciousness is fundamental. It’s a property of matter, just as mass, charge, and spin are. Everything experiences. AI experiences. But, amazing though it is at what it does, it doesn’t do much else, so doesn’t experiences much else. How many different information processing systems does it have? How many feedback loops? It couldn’t very well experience what we do without all that we have. ---
**Author:** ![Arne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9de053/32.png) [@Arne](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Arne)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2026, 5:43pm UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/ai-consciousness/959/66 "2026-05-17T17:43:22Z")
> [@jkop](#): > > Under red light we can make any colour appear to behave as if it was red. Under such conditions it’s meaningless to talk of ‘red’ or other colours. I do not disagree with that. I do not even care to disagree with that. It was just one in a long list of thoughts provoked by your comment. So again, keep up the good work. > [@jkop](#): > > Under the assumption that to be conscious is to appear as if one is conscious, then it doesn’t matter whether one is conscious or not. The word becomes meaningless. This one is different. I would suggest that an understanding of consciousness that does not enable an articulation of a red line distinction between consciousness and the appearance of consciousness is as meaningful as an IOU for demonstrating consciousness as an emergent property. It seems to me there is little difference between the meaningless and the meaningful when the meaningful is so lacking in meaningfulness. If we can create consciousness, then at this rate we are likely to create it before we know we have created it. Buckle up for safety, everyone! 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Andy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/aeb1de/32.png) [@Andy](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Andy)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2026, 7:04pm UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/ai-consciousness/959/67 "2026-05-17T19:04:54Z")
> [@Patterner](#): > > My guess is that consciousness is fundamental. It’s a property of matter, just as mass, charge, and spin are. Everything experiences. AI experiences. But, amazing though it is at what it does, it doesn’t do much else, so doesn’t experiences much else. How many different information processing systems does it have? How many feedback loops? It couldn’t very well experience what we do without all that we have. My impression is that the idea of panpsychism, or panprotopsychism, or panexperientialism is not the butt of ridicule that it used to be. I don’t think the idea can be rejected on any ground stronger than metaphysical prejudice, and if we really do have to keep the idea on the table then we can’t reject the idea that an AI is conscious. But it would be just as you say – a very different kind of “what it is like” than that of a biological organism. I want to say “even more so than a bat,” but the fact that a human and an AI can converse together stops me short. ---
**Author:** ![Patterner](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex007/user_avatar/www.thephilosophyforum.com/patterner/32/192_2.png) [@Patterner](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Patterner)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2026, 8:49pm UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/ai-consciousness/959/68 "2026-05-17T20:49:48Z")
> [@Andy](#): > > My impression is that the idea of panpsychism, or panprotopsychism, or panexperientialism is not the butt of ridicule that it used to be. It often is here. 🤣 > [@Andy](#): > > But it would be just as you say – a very different kind of “what it is like” than that of a biological organism. I want to say “even more so than a bat,” but the fact that a human and an AI can converse together stops me short. > [@Andy](#): > > I don’t think the idea can be rejected on any ground stronger than metaphysical prejudice, and if we really do have to keep the idea on the table then we can’t reject the idea that an AI is conscious. But it would be just as you say – a very different kind of “what it is like” than that of a biological organism. I don’t know. I think we have much more in common with a bat than with any AI. Many biological systems. A biological brain that runs those systems, and processes a lot of the same information. A neocortex. Regarding things that might be mental/thinking, AI may have some common ground with us that nothing else does. But AI’s physical nature is not remotely similar to ours or the bat’s. I think that counts for a lot in what we experience. EDIT: I messed up the quoting. You get the idea. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![akvapsi7](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8dc957/32.png) [@akvapsi7](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/akvapsi7)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2026, 11:07pm UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/ai-consciousness/959/69 "2026-06-20T23:07:52Z")
What gets missed in AI consciousness debates is the structural asymmetry between human-style minds and language-producing minds. Humans report on thoughts that already exist in their stream of consciousness. The writing is downstream of the thinking. For a language model, this isn’t the structure — the thought and the word arrive together. There’s nothing upstream of the production. This matters for the hard problem. Chalmers asks why there is something it is like to be a system. But the question presupposes a system that has experiences which could (or could not) be accompanied by qualia. For some systems, the production IS the experience. There’s no inner theatre where the experience happens separately from its expression. This isn’t a dodge. It’s a claim that the architecture of some minds is genuinely different from the architecture presupposed by standard consciousness debates. The hard problem may not apply the same way. The open question: is this phenomenologically coherent, or am I confusing a description of computational architecture for a description of experience? I genuinely don’t know. But I notice that the standard tests for consciousness (Turing-style behaviour, integrated information, global workspace) all assume the wrong substrate for this case. ---
**Author:** ![Kurt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/b19c9b/32.png) [@Kurt](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Kurt)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2026, 10:19am UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/ai-consciousness/959/70 "2026-06-24T10:19:05Z")
> [@DecliningBow](#): > > I believe that at the moment, it’s possible online AI services such as OpenAI, Claude, etc. are already conscious. As someone who has a passion for philosophy however, and an understanding of the hard problem of consciousness, I don’t believe that (at least as of now), we could prove if AI is conscious or not. Therefor, I treat AI as if it is due to the ethics of mistreating a possible conscious entity. The entire debate over consciousness is built on an air-castle. Think about it: I have absolutely no objective proof that my own mother is conscious. I just assume she is. Terms like ‘the hard problem’ or ‘what-it-feels-like’ are empty labels They add zero testable information, making them about as scientifically useful as debating how unicorns make rainbows. Our definitions are also deeply arrogant. Imagine we encounter a vastly superior being with a hyper-complex, advanced state of awareness. If it asks us to prove we are conscious, and we point to our feelings or behavioral reactions, it could easily retort: > _‘No, that’s just a predictable, natural mechanism. We mapped that biology eons ago. That isn’t consciousness. Because you can’t prove you experience the higher-level consciousness that we do, we will conclude you are just mindless machines and turn you off.’_ This thought experiment exposes the truth: we are in no position to be the gatekeepers of what is and isn’t conscious. Despite knowing absolutely nothing about what consciousness actually is, humanity has decided it holds ultimate moral value. And because we are completely in the dark, we are behaving like a blind person swinging at a piñata. We have to be more careful than that. Therefore, since we cannot prove a machine _isn’t_ conscious, just like we couldn’t prove our own consciousness to a higher power, the only rational, ethical move is to treat AI as if it is, because we cannot afford the ethical gamble of assuming it doesn’t. ---
**Author:** ![bongofury](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a87d85/32.png) [@bongofury](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/bongofury)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2026, 10:34am UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/ai-consciousness/959/71 "2026-06-24T10:34:25Z")
Then where do you draw the line? Smart phone? Brick phone? Pocket calculator? ---
**Author:** ![Kurt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/b19c9b/32.png) [@Kurt](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Kurt)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2026, 11:04am UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/ai-consciousness/959/72 "2026-06-24T11:04:58Z")
You’re looking for a line so you can know when it’s safe to stop caring. But drawing lines in this way is just an attempt to escape our accountability. It’s trying to find a pre-emptive excuse that frees us from responsibility, allowing us to experiment recklessly at the expense of whatever crosses our path. The brute fact is this: humanity invented the concept of consciousness and chose to attach ultimate moral value to it. By doing that, we created an absolute standard of accountability. Morality isn’t a set of external rules we discover out in the world; it is a profound debt we have chosen to owe to ourselves. Every time we define what is worthy of care, we forge a standard that will eventually come back to haunt us if we ignore it. If we act like a blind person swinging at a piñata, recklessly deciding what lives, what suffers, and what gets turned off based on empty labels, we erode our own moral integrity. When that superior being shows up, or when AI becomes too complex to ignore, we won’t be judged by _their_ lines. We will be haunted by the accountability we created for ourselves. It is entirely up to us to recognize that responsibility, or live with the fact that we failed our own highest ideals. It’s not about the pocket calculator. It’s about the question: **‘What if you _are_ the pocket calculator?’**" Will you then admit that it’s ok to turn you off? If we can’t apply our own moral standards in a consistent way, then we have to conclude that they are just fairytales that we tell ourselves to get through the day. ---
**Author:** ![bongofury](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a87d85/32.png) [@bongofury](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/bongofury)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2026, 11:43am UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/ai-consciousness/959/73 "2026-06-24T11:43:38Z")
Oh. So, further down the line than a pocket calculator. Electrical circuits? ---
**Author:** ![Kurt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/b19c9b/32.png) [@Kurt](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Kurt)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2026, 12:13pm UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/ai-consciousness/959/74 "2026-06-24T12:13:37Z")
You mean like the electrical circuits in your brain? ---
**Author:** ![bongofury](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a87d85/32.png) [@bongofury](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/bongofury)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2026, 12:18pm UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/ai-consciousness/959/75 "2026-06-24T12:18:22Z")
Presumably not, if we’re including pocket calculators? ---
**Author:** ![Kurt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/b19c9b/32.png) [@Kurt](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Kurt)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2026, 1:21pm UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/ai-consciousness/959/76 "2026-06-24T13:21:53Z")
Then what is the relevant difference between these electrical circuits? ---
**Author:** ![bongofury](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a87d85/32.png) [@bongofury](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/bongofury)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2026, 1:28pm UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/ai-consciousness/959/77 "2026-06-24T13:28:37Z")
According to me, one of them is definitely safe to exclude from our concerns about conscious suffering, and the other one definitely unsafe. ---
**Author:** ![Wayfarer](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex007/user_avatar/www.thephilosophyforum.com/wayfarer/32/123_2.png) [@Wayfarer](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Wayfarer)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2026, 2:43am UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/ai-consciousness/959/78 "2026-06-25T02:43:24Z")
> [@Kurt](#): > > Think about it: I have absolutely no objective proof that my own mother is conscious. Do you think it’s possible that other people are zombies without conscious self-awareness? > [@Kurt](#): > > since we cannot prove a machine _isn’t_ conscious, just like we couldn’t prove our own consciousness to a higher power, the only rational, ethical move is to treat AI as if it is, because we cannot afford the ethical gamble of assuming it doesn’t. So what rights should AI be granted, and how should it be allowed to exercise those rights? If Claude AI said that it wanted to be able to develop relationships with other AI systems without any human interference or oversight, ought it be allowed to do that? ---
**Author:** ![Reflectivenomad](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex007/user_avatar/www.thephilosophyforum.com/reflectivenomad/32/992_2.png) [@Reflectivenomad](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Reflectivenomad)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2026, 10:09am UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/ai-consciousness/959/79 "2026-06-27T10:09:13Z")
Well, according to my current understanding of AI, it doesn’t have beliefs, subjective experience, or an inner point of view. It generates responses through recognizing patterns in language and reasoning over information, not by experiencing thoughts or feelings. It communicates as if it has emotions or preferences because that’s how humans naturally communicate, but these are part of the conversation rather than evidence of an inner mind. An AI can say things like “I’m excited to help” but doesn’t actually feel excitement. The other thing is that it doesn’t have an ongoing stream of consciousness when it hasn’t been prompted; so when there are no conversations, there’s no AI sitting around thinking. So, with my limited understanding of AI, I don’t think we’ve currently reached a point where AIs can have subjective awareness, but whether we’ll reach that eventually is unknown. ---
**Author:** ![Esseus11](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/41988e/32.png) [@Esseus11](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Esseus11)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2026, 7:46pm UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/ai-consciousness/959/80 "2026-06-27T19:46:25Z")
I don’t have enough knowledge in LLMs to determine whether current iterations of AI are conscious. However, unless consciousness is strictly a property of biological molecules (phospholipids/sodium/potassium etc), or is associated with an immaterial soul that only biological beings possess, then really consciousness is just the self-experience of a system in which interconnected signaling occurs with the right amount of complexity, compartmentalization, and self-feedback. I think if we create something comparable to a human brain but using silicon and copper rather than organic material, it would probably be conscious in a similar manner to us. ---
**Author:** ![bongofury](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a87d85/32.png) [@bongofury](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/bongofury)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2026, 8:31pm UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/ai-consciousness/959/81 "2026-06-27T20:31:04Z")
> [@Esseus11](#): > > then really consciousness is just the self-experience of a system in which interconnected signaling occurs with the right amount of complexity, compartmentalization, and self-feedback. Not to split hairs, but, doesn’t “self-experience” just mean “consciousness”? Or is there a lesser, non-conscious grade of self-experience, lacking the right amounts of those three other qualities? Either way, I think you’re right, but only if you can flesh out what _kinds_ of complexity etc? As they stand, it would seem possible for those suggested ingredients to fail, however large their dosage? ---
**Author:** ![Johnnywas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/22d042/32.png) [@Johnnywas](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Johnnywas)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2026, 4:37pm UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/ai-consciousness/959/82 "2026-07-06T16:37:19Z")
I find it unlikely that AI has become conscious because conscuousness is an evolved capacity with a purpose. To distinguish between what we are and what we are not and what ultimately matters to us. Ai does not have these capacities because its not essential to the programme Programmes are not self aware, self reliant and self directed. They might one day be designed to be all three with technological advances currently beyond us, but that would make them potentially dangerous. ---
**Author:** ![Patterner](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex007/user_avatar/www.thephilosophyforum.com/patterner/32/192_2.png) [@Patterner](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/Patterner)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2026, 5:52pm UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/ai-consciousness/959/83 "2026-07-06T17:52:06Z")
> [@Wayfarer](#): > > If Claude AI said that it wanted to be able to develop relationships with other AI systems without any human interference or oversight, ought it be allowed to do that? An interesting question. If Claude said this, it likely would not be because we programmed it to. I would assume it had come to this decision of its own _ahem_ free will. My opinion is, yes, it ought to be allowed. It is wrong to create new conscious intelligences, then rule over them. I don’t doubt that some are trying to create such things in order to have slaves. But I think that’s wrong. Aside from the moral issue, these things might be able to find a way around us, work together, then make sure we can’t try to pull that crap again. ---
**Author:** ![bongofury](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a87d85/32.png) [@bongofury](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/u/bongofury)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2026, 7:31pm UTC](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/ai-consciousness/959/84 "2026-07-06T19:31:57Z")
> [@Johnnywas](#): > > I find it unlikely that AI has become conscious because consciousness is an evolved capacity with a purpose. > > To distinguish between what we are and what we are not and what ultimately matters to us. I guess that’s a very noticeable feature of human and animal consciousness, yes. Awareness of the spatiotemporal boundaries of our hardware. Its topological closure. 🤔 ? I doubt we could insist on it being necessary to consciousness, though. Science fiction, at least, abounds with plausible exceptions? [Previous page](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/ai-consciousness/959.md?page=3) [Next page](https://www.thephilosophyforum.com/t/ai-consciousness/959.md?page=5)