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Do We Know What Consciousness Is or If AI Can Be It

29 April 2026 · 34 views · 0 likes · 0 reposts · 136 blog views

AI automation chatgpt learning neuroscience philosophy

Consciousness. I think people are way too confident about something we don’t even know how to define.

Google DeepMind researcher saying LLMs can never be conscious.

Not in 10 years. Not in 100.

The argument:

a formula of gravity doesn’t create weight so an algorithm of consciousness doesn’t create experience

But we don’t actually know what "experience" is.

We point at/feel it. We name it "consciousness".

But try to define it .... or measure ... or reproduce it?

And that creates a weird situation.

We’re basically arguing:

we don’t know what consciousness is we don’t know how it emerges and we’re sure machines can’t have it

I remember reading a wonderful book, Life 3.0, where Tegmark also contemplates this idea. Consciousness is just information processing; biology isn’t anything special. It doesn't hold a monopoly on it.

There are actually 3 views on that:

1️⃣ consciousness is the process itself Recreate the pattern and you recreate the experience

2️⃣ something extra We can explain behavior but not why it feels like something (qualia)

3️⃣ biology matters Maybe consciousness depends on physical substrate ... simulation is not real experience

... and we’ve been here before:

Galileo Galilei: not the center of the universe Charles Darwin: not specially created now: maybe not fundamentally different from machines

Each time, same reaction.

➡️ this can’t be true ⬅️

There’s also this word people love: simulation.

AI just simulates understanding

but what does that even mean?

  1. Airplanes don’t flap wings. Still fly.

  2. Calculators don’t "understand" math. Still give correct answers.

So if something behaves indistinguishably from understanding… at what point do we stop calling it fake?

I’m not saying AI is conscious.

I don’t know. You don’t know. Nobody knows.

Source: deepmind.google/research/publi…

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