consciousness

scientific investigations of the boundaries between conscious and unconscious systems are urgently needed, and they cite ethical, legal and safety issues that make it crucial to understand AI consciousness. For example, if AI develops consciousness, should people be allowed to simply switch it off after use?

Interestingly, many users who emotionally mourned the ‘loss’ of GPT-4o expressed complete awareness of its lack of consciousness. And yet, in many cases, the subjective grief that they felt was no less real. This demonstrates that the power of the illusion is such that a given user might not actually believe that their AI companion is conscious,... See more