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[2510.09858] AI and Consciousness

arxiv.org · 8,305 words · saved by 1 readers

Abstract:This is a skeptical overview of the literature on AI consciousness. We will soon create AI systems that are conscious according to some influential, mainstream theories of consciousness but are not conscious according to other influential, mainstream theories of consciousness. We will not be in a position to know which theories are correct and whether we are surrounded by AI systems as richly and meaningfully conscious as human beings or instead only by systems as experientially blank as toasters. None of the standard arguments either for or against AI consciousness takes us far. Table of Contents Chapter One: Hills and Fog Chapter Two: What Is Consciousness? What Is AI? Chapter Three: Ten Possibly Essential Features of Consciousness Chapter Four: Against Introspective and Conceptual Arguments for Essential Features Chapter Five: Materialism and Functionalism Chapter Six: The Turing Test and the Chinese Room Chapter Seven: The Mimicry Argument Against AI Consciousness Chapter Eight: Global Workspace Theories and Higher Order Theories Chapter Nine: Integrated Information, Local Recurrence, Associative Learning, and Iterative Natural Kinds Chapter Ten: Does Biological Substrate Matter? Chapter Eleven: The Leapfrog Hypothesis, Strange Intelligence, and the Social Semi-Solution

AI and Consciousness: A Skeptical Overview Eric Schwitzgebel Department of Philosophy University of California, Riverside Riverside, CA 92521-0201 USA March 30, 2026 forthcoming in the Cambridge Elements series Although citation of the final published version is preferable, this version may be cited as…

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