AI's Next Frontier? An Algorithm for Consciousness

"As a journalist who covers AI, I hear from countless people who seem utterly convinced that ChatGPT, Claude, or some other chatbot has achieved "sentience." Or "consciousness." Or-my personal favorite-"a mind of its own." The Turing test was aced a while back, yes, but unlike rote intelligence, these things are not so easily pinned down. Large language models will claim to think for themselves, even describe inner torments or profess undying loves, but such statements don't imply interiority."

"Could they ever? Many of the actual builders of AI don't speak in these terms. They're too busy chasing the performance benchmark known as "artificial general intelligence," which is a purely functional category that has nothing to do with a machine's potential experience of the world. So-skeptic though I am-I thought it might be eye-opening, possibly even enlightening, to spend time with a company that thinks it can crack the code on consciousness itself."

"Conscium was founded in 2024 by the British AI researcher and entrepreneur Daniel Hulme, and its advisers include an impressive assortment of neuroscientists, philosophers, and experts in animal consciousness. When we first talked, Hulme was realistic: There are good reasons to doubt that language models are capable of consciousness. Crows, octopuses, even amoeba can interact with their environments in ways chatbots cannot. Experiments also suggest that AI utterances do not reflect coherent or consistent states."

Many people believe chatbots have achieved sentience or consciousness, yet large language model utterances do not prove interiority. Builders often prioritize artificial general intelligence as a functional performance benchmark rather than experiential capacity. Conscium, founded in 2024 by Daniel Hulme, brings together neuroscientists, philosophers, and animal-consciousness experts to attempt detection, measurement, and engineering of machine consciousness. Hulme acknowledges that current models are crude representations of brains and that animals like crows and octopuses exhibit environmental interactions beyond chatbots. Experimental evidence shows AI outputs lack coherent, consistent internal states. Conscium proceeds on the hypothesis that consciousness, if present in animals, can be measured and constructed in machines.

Read at WIRED