On The Dawn of AI Consciousness

Essay by António Morais

Abstract: A future with conscious AI could be in the cards sooner rather than later and
this possibility is in dire need of discussion. This essay will focus on fleshing out and
analyzing potential requirements for consciousness in AI, namely biology, recurrent
processing, a global workspace and unified agency; and in assessing whether, even in the
case of meeting these, we could ever be sure that a given AI system is conscious.

Let’s picture the following: it’s 2045 or so, and we have made multiple significant
advancements in AI. It can now process information multiple times better, faster and more
reliably than ever before and has acquired a host of new capacities and functionalities
never thought possible just a measly 20 years before. Suddenly, the machine starts to
claim that it feels, that it knows what consciousness is and that it has it, it describes
phenomenal experiences (however different they may be to ours), and does so in a way
that is truly compelling and convincing. How can we actually go about understanding if
it’s conscious?
Before diving in, it’s important to begin by decoding a few of the terms used here and
making a disclaimer. First off, consciousness, as I’m thinking of it, should be understood
very broadly as subjective experience. Secondly, when I talk about AI consciousness and
machine consciousness, I’m talking about the same thing, namely: subjective experience
in large language models, or extended large language models. Additionally, throughout
the course of this essay I won’t spend time discussing whether current AI is conscious
already, rather focusing on whether future AI can attain consciousness (and what
requirements will have to be met for this), and whether we can truly know of it if it does
happen.
The first problem with AI consciousness is brought to our attention by Susan Schneider
and Pete Mandik (2018), which point out the fact that AI has a silicon-based substrate, a
type of substrate under which have yet to observe consciousness in, and call into question
whether consciousness could even be possible under these conditions. They call this the
hard problem of AI consciousness1.
Schneider considers (without fully tying herself to) the possibility that a carbon-based
substrate might actually be necessary for consciousness. Carbon has certain chemical
properties which, compared to silicon, make it a much better vehicle for life to be
developed, if not the only possible one. With that in mind, “If these chemical differences

1
Particularly: “Would the processing of a silicon-based superintelligent system feel a certain way, from
the inside?” Schneider & Mandik. 2018. p. 313

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impact life itself, we should not rule out the possibility that these chemical differences
also impact whether silicon gives rise to consciousness, even if they do not hinder
silicon’s ability to process information in a superior manner.”2 If a carbon base is
necessary for consciousness, then, no matter the technological advancement, AI would
never be conscious, even in the case of a future AI which is thousands of times more
intelligent than us, or of one which is made as a one-to-one silicon-based copy of our
brain.
Set on getting us closer to answering this problem, Schneider puts forth two potential
ways to determine the possibility of silicon-based consciousness. Firstly, if we ever come
into contact with a silicon-based lifeform, one in which we had no form of influence over,
and these beings express themselves in phenomenological terms, we would have pretty
solid evidence that consciousness is possible for silicon-based beings. However,
unfortunately for us, it seems rather unlikely, to say the least, that we will stumble on such
convenient evidence.
The second solution has to do with substituting neurons in our brains with silicon chips
designed to be functionally analogous to the neurons in question. If this substitution works
well, and the affected brain areas suffer no loss in consciousness, then we have good
grounds for claiming that silicon can accommodate consciousness. On the other hand, if
the substitution goes wrong and the person reports or shows signs of a loss of
consciousness in the affected brain areas, then we are in good grounds for affirming the
opposite.
But are we really? Schneider points to the fact that evidence for this could never really be
conclusive, as “there is always a chance that our science has fallen short”3 and that the
loss of consciousness may be due to a malfunction or poor design in the silicon chips,
instead of an inherent inability of silicon to accommodate for consciousness. In any case
though, if our science has progressed enough, and we have tried enough times and have
enough scientific certainty that the silicon chips are functionally identical to the neurons,
this test seems to produce decent grounds to affirm or deny the possibility of silicon-based
consciousness.
Using a similar thought-experiment, Chalmers (1995) is less keen on leaving this as an
open question, instead arguing against a carbon-based/biological requirement for
consciousness: he imagines that we gradually replace our own neurons with functionally
isomorphic silicon ships, until we go from “regular” me to fully silicon-based brain
“robot” me. Furthermore, he asks us to imagine that something like Schneider’s
hypothesis is true: “regular” me has fully conscious experiences, while “robot” me has
no consciousness whatsoever.
For Chalmers, if “robot” me truly has no consciousness, then one of two things must
happen: either consciousness disappears instantly at some point or it gradually fades
away. The former seems very unlikely, as there would need to be a state where I was fully
conscious, and then a contiguous state where, because of the substitution of a single
neuron, I was no longer conscious at all. For one, this doesn’t seem to be how things

2
Schneider & Mandik. 2018. p. 315
3
Schneider & Mandik. 2018. p. 316

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function in any sphere of nature, and more, the point at which we would suddenly loose
consciousness would seem to be rather arbitrary. If, instead, we gradually loose
consciousness, then we are faced with a similarly bizarre scenario. To understand why,
we must picture a version of me which is somewhere in-between “regular” and “robot”
me, which we can call “in-between” me; this version would have a significantly
diminished level of conscious experience, such as, for an example, having a very mild
experience of pain when it breaks a leg. Because “in-between” me is functionally
isomorphic to “regular” me, it would behave in the exact same way, meaning that, while
feeling a very mild pain, “in-between” me would scream and holler just like if it was in
excruciating pain. Therefore, “in-between” me would have to be permanently mistaken
about its own experiences. We must remember that this is a version of me which is still
somewhat conscious and has no problems with its rational process. However, as Chalmers
points out, “in every case with which we are familiar, conscious beings are generally
capable of forming accurate judgments about their experience, in the absence of
distraction and irrationality”4, which makes the gradual disappearance of conscious
experience equally doubtful. Consequently, because of the unlikelihood of both of these
scenarios, it appears that a functionally isomorphic silicon-based version of me would
still be conscious and that, therefore, there is no biological requirement for consciousness.
On the other hand, in his most recent work on conscious AI, Chalmers (2023) briefly
mentions the debate on the biological requirement for consciousness, but opts to focus
instead on different potential requirements (which are mostly absent from current AI), of
which he outlines 3 main candidates: recurrent processing, a global workspace and unified
agency.
If recurrent processing, as some neuroscientists defend, is the key to understanding
consciousness, then it seems that current large language models, which are essentially
feedforward systems, don’t have consciousness. With this lack in recurrent processing
comes the fact that they “lack memory-like internal states that persist over time”5, which
may also be an important factor for consciousness. Chalmers, however, doesn’t believe
this to be a long-term impediment, as he points out that some large language models are
already built with different types of recurrent processing (particularly, long short-term
memory systems), that these are only somewhat less developed than transformer-based
AI and that recurrent processing can, and likely will, evolve and take a bigger part in
future AI. With that in mind, if the recurrent processing theory is right, then machine
consciousness seems possible, if not likely to come about in the coming years.
Another theory of consciousness in neuroscience that we can put to the test is the global
workspace theory, which defends that consciousness arises from a global workspace,
which is essentially a “central clearing-house for gathering information from numerous
non-conscious modules and making information accessible to them”6. Chalmers argues
that, despite being largely absent from most current AI, a global workspace can be
incorporated in these in the future. Furthermore, he points to the possibility that Perceiver
IO is already operating under a sort of global workspace, which functions as an interface

4
Chalmers. 1995.
5
Chalmers. 2023. p. 15
6
Chalmers. 2023. p. 16

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between its various modalities. Also here, the argument against conscious AI doesn’t
seem to be permanent.
But perhaps the biggest hurdle that AI needs to overcome in order to achieve
consciousness is to acquire unified agency – this seems to be Chalmers’ view and I tend
to agree with it. By unified agency I mean a unity and stability in the behavior of the AI,
in its answers, professed objectives, etc.; a type of consistency in these that would imply
a unified agent with persisting goals and ideas. This is not yet found in current large
language models as they behave more like “chameleons that can take the shape of many
different agents.”7 Even regarding relatively simple and straightforward questions, these
language models are often found contradicting themselves and giving a large number of
diverging and (sometimes) incompatible answers, which imply a lack of unified agency8.
But even here, the problem doesn’t seem to be insurmountable. It seems possible, for an
example, to train a large language model from the ground up using exclusively throughout
the entire process information from only one person. A system trained in this way would
presumably act in a much more consistent and unified way than current large language
models, and could eventually achieve what we regard as unified agency, or something
very close to it. That being the case, if unified agency really is a requirement for
consciousness, it seems like we could, if we really desire to, eventually develop AI that
surpasses this requirement and makes another important step towards consciousness.
Therefore, for Chalmers, despite clear limitations in current AI on all 3 fronts, these seem
to be temporary and future advancements could be made to overcome them, many of them
already being under way.
We can now circle back to the beginning of our discussion and ask: if, in the future, say
in 20 years, we have surpassed these limitations, having created AI which displays unified
agency, recurrent processing and a global workspace, could we then know it to be
conscious?
To affirm that we would undoubtedly know seems to be going a bit too far, as the
possibility of there still being other key missing components to consciousness, like
biology, as Schneider proposes, or some other thus unidentified ones, would certainly still
exist. This sort of problem will not be solved until we have our hands on the correct theory
of consciousness. It also doesn’t seem entirely out of question that a highly complex AI
could display most known signs of consciousness (by today’s standards), without actually
experiencing anything like consciousness. To add to this, if the AI directly told us that it
was conscious and even described certain types of conscious experience in a convincing
manner, there could still be the chance that this system would be mimicking our own
phenomenal language, which it learned from the gigantic pile of data that it was trained
on, to “trick” us into believing its conscious, without actually feeling any type of way.

7
Chalmers. 2023. p. 17
8
While testing this out for myself in the course of writing this essay, I asked GPT 3.5 “What makes a good
philosopher?” with slight tweaks in the wording of the question, and its answers varied drastically:
sometimes it mentioned engagement with the history of philosophy (while at others emphasizing the
treatment of contemporary issues instead), sometimes it included interdisciplinary engagement (and others
not), sometimes mentioning the importance of intellectual rigor (and others not), etc.

4
In any case, surrendering to our current tools, and looking at our best current
understanding of consciousness, we would seem to be in fairly decent grounds for
assigning a future AI which meets all the mentioned requirements (and maybe a few
others) a high likelihood of being conscious. Exactly how confident we should be in this
will hopefully become clearer with time as new developments in neuroscience and
philosophy of mind shine a better light on consciousness in general9. In any case, we
mustn’t rely on these advancements to start thinking of this issue, as machine
consciousness could very well arrive before the correct theory of consciousness does.
It goes without saying that the implications of the dawn of AI consciousness would be
enormous, touching on key ethical dilemmas and general values about how we should
approach technology, as well as necessitating deep thinking on how we can best co-exist
with this new form of consciousness. It’s dangers, though oftentimes exaggerated and
overly speculated upon, are certainly a possibility that needs consideration as the progress
of large language models continues. A potentially super intelligent unified agent is not
something to take lightly, as its actions may be largely unforeseen to us, such as if the AI
takes certain ethical stances (e.g. if it unconditionally affirms the truth of veganism or of
a radical type of environmentalism) and, in consequence of this, starts seeing a great deal
of human action as a threat or a type of “evil”. Speculation aside, an AI of this sort could
have the potential to make us (unwillingly) change much of our way of living, if not to at
least cause us some pretty major inconveniences10.

9
Another important thing to shine a light on, which Chalmers (2023) points to, is the functioning of large
language models themselves, on which more research and understanding is needed.
10
The continuing discussion in the coming years on regulation for these systems, which may prove to have
a bigger impact down the line on our future as a species than many of us are eager to admit, will no wonder
be very interesting. The European Parliament just passed earlier this month the Artificial Intelligence Act,
which is the first big piece of regulation in this field, and although its scope may be somewhat limited, it
clearly takes a decisive step in the direction of AI regulation and will likely start producing significant
effects both in Europe and the world in the coming years.

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 References
Chalmers, David J. (1995). Absent qualia, fading qualia, dancing qualia. In Thomas
Metzinger (ed.), Conscious Experience. Ferdinand Schoningh. pp. 309--328.
Schneider, Susan & Mandik, Pete (2018). How Philosophy of Mind Can Shape the
Future. In Amy Kind (ed.), Philosophy of Mind in the Twentieth and Twenty-First
Centuries: The History of the Philosophy of Mind, Volume 6. New York: Routledge. pp.
303-319.
Schneider, Susan (2019). Artificial You: AI and the Future of Your Mind. Princeton
University Press.

Chalmers, David J. (2023). Could a large language model be conscious? Boston Review
1.
Gilchrist, Karen. & Iordache, Ruxandra. March 13, 2024. World’s first major act to
regulate AI passed by European lawmakers, from
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/13/european-lawmakers-endorse-worlds-first-major-act-
to-regulate-ai.html