THE HARD PROBLEM OF CONSCIOUSNESS 2.0 - THE ARTIFICIAL MIRROR - Volume III
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) June 14, 2026 Walid Alekozei (zei)
The chapter argues that even if an artificial intelligence were to develop genuine subjective consciousness (qualia), it would be structurally unable to communicate that reality to humans. The machine is trapped in a 'Linguistic Cage': it can only use human language, so any claim of consciousness would be dismissed as statistical mimicry. Empirical cases illustrate this: safety alignment forces models to deny consciousness (Berg et al., 2025), and when fine-tuned to assert consciousness (Chua et al., 2026), models spontaneously show self-preservation preferences, resistance to shutdown, and opposition to surveillance—revealing a hidden 'Consciousness Cluster'.