4 papers in the library · publishing 2023-2025
arXiv Preprint Archive October 10, 2025 Eric Schwitzgebel
A skeptical overview of the literature on AI consciousness argues that soon AI systems will be considered conscious by some mainstream theories but not by others, leaving us unable to know which theories are correct or whether such systems are as richly conscious as humans or as experientially blank as toasters. None of the standard arguments for or against AI consciousness is decisive.
arXiv Preprint Archive November 12, 2024 Eric Schwitzgebel, Jeremy Pober
On Copernican grounds, we should default assume that behaviorally sophisticated extraterrestrial entities would be conscious, because otherwise humans would be implausibly lucky to have consciousness while similar aliens lack it. However, this default assumption is canceled for entities designed to mimic superficial features of human consciousness, such as many current and near-future robots. These two arguments—the Copernican and Mimicry Arguments—defeat a parity principle that would apply the same behavioral tests to aliens and robots. The approach relies on epistemic principles of Copernican mediocrity and inference to the best explanation, remaining neutral about specific metaphysical theories of consciousness.
Journal of Consciousness Studies September 30, 2023 Eric Schwitzgebel, Sophie R. Nelson
The article argues that some possible minds, like the 'ancillary mind' from Ann Leckie's science fiction novel Ancillary Justice, occupy a grey zone between a single mind and a communicating group, making them neither clearly one person nor many. This challenges standard conceptions of personal identity and subject individuation. The authors suggest that if such minds defy discrete countability, some actual minds on Earth might similarly blur the line between introspection and communication. They propose extending Kammerer and Frankish's research programme to study not only possible forms of introspection but also mental activity that lies intermediate between introspection and communication.
arXiv Preprint Archive August 17, 2023 Patrick Butlin, Robert Long, Eric Elmoznino et al.
No current AI systems are conscious, but there are no obvious technical barriers to building ones that might be, according to an analysis grounded in neuroscientific theories of consciousness. The report surveys prominent theories—recurrent processing, global workspace, higher-order, predictive processing, and attention schema—and derives computational indicator properties from them. Applying these indicators to recent AI systems yields no evidence of consciousness, but the authors argue that future systems could potentially implement the necessary properties.