// NATURE NEWS — SPAZIO & SCIENZA
Three reasons why AI is not conscious and perhaps never will be
Anil K. Seth is a professor of cognitive and computational neuroscience at the Sussex Centre for Consciousness Science at the University of Sussex, Brighton, UK, and a co-director at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, Program on Brain, Mind, and Consciousness, Toronto, Canada.
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Ned Block is a professor in the Department of Philosophy, New York University, New York, USA.
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Giulio Tononi is the director of the Wisconsin Institute for Sleep and Consciousness and a professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Madison, Wisconsin, USA.
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Artificial-intelligence systems such as large language models (LLMs) can exhibit behaviour that seems strikingly intelligent. This has led many people, including some experts, to wonder whether these systems could have some form of consciousness — the capacity for subjective experience. However, we think that existing AI systems are not conscious, and that, along current trajectories of development, they are not likely to become conscious. Greater clarity about whether AI could become consciousness will be crucial as society grapples with the challenges posed by this increasingly powerful technology.
Can AI ever be conscious? The question stems from a misconception
Several prominent scientists, including biologist Richard Dawkins and AI pioneer Geoffrey Hinton, have argued that AI systems might already be conscious. And earlier this year, AI company Anthropic in San Francisco, California, published research claiming to have identified computational signatures of a form of consciousness in its Claude model1.
Whether AI models can ever be conscious is not merely a philosophical question. It has practical implications. For instance, if AI systems were conscious, they might experience distress and pain, similar to how people do. Then should countless new conscious entities that might experience suffering be allowed to proliferate? Perhaps not surprisingly, some people are already calling for ‘AI welfare’ and ‘AI rights’ to be taken seriously2.