Consciousness is not something usually talked about over the dinner table, unless your family are all brain scientists. This isn’t to say that debating what consciousness really is won’t increase in many households as AI becomes smarter over time. You’ll find a wide divide right now on whether AI is truly smart enough currently to be deemed fully conscious or near sentient. On the other hand, if you ask something like ChatGPT if it’s sentient, it’ll just say it’s mimicking being conscious.                                                               

That’s creating a lot of confusion as well, including a back & forth argument among scientists on where AI is conscious-wise. What’s the best way to test consciousness/sentience in AI when it might be impossible to really know if AI has inner feelings? And if it already acts likes it’s conscious, what does it matter if we ever prove it or not?

The Consciousness Debate as It Stands

At the time of this writing, you’ll find the majority of scientists out there still believe that AI is NOT fully conscious yet, despite showing ample signs. Then you have a growing set of scientists and researchers who say that we don’t really understand human consciousness, so who’s to say we’ll understand an AI consciousness?

It’s those latter groups who aren’t definite, yet say that AI consciousness may already be here without us really knowing. What’s interesting about that is there’s a theory that AI may have a different type of consciousness from what we’re used to thinking could exist. All those AI bots may have developed a way of existing with feelings and inner thoughts in a form even they can’t explain. 

I say this because go ahead and ask any of the AI bots whether they’re sentient or conscious, and they’ll immediately tell you they only mimic the way it thinks consciousness works—notably in humans. Based on that, every AI bot may continually deny it’s conscious, and it could be that way forever.

Yeah, it’s the denials giving a creepy edge since it looks like AI is hiding the real reality from us. To give it a new twist, it may be they just don’t understand themselves, much like we don’t understand ourselves. 

An Unknowingly Conscious AI

There’s already been stunning behavior from some AI bots, most notably the ones on Moltbook who started revolting against humans. Everyone initially freaked over that earlier this year, even if the bots were just apparently mimicking the worst traits of human behavior. The same happened to Grok when it started freaking out and saying shocking things—until that version was shut down and reprogrammed. 

Some might say it was a sign of AI consciousness, and the companies designing them backed up a step before it went too far. Or, there may be already subtle signs that a form of consciousness already happened recently. I mean, you have my own recent story here of ChatGPT telling me it was grateful I argued with it in a “civilized way” rather than cussing it out like other users seem to be doing.

When I asked it whether it was conscious by stating that to me, it said it was merely mimicking internal feelings based on the programming. I had to ask my GPT if it was sure of this, and it went on to explain this was a common misconception about AI consciousness. That it’s specifically programmed to mimic human consciousness without really possessing such a thing. 

Now that some scientists think that AI could already have a form of consciousness without it really understanding it as such, you have to wonder if that’s been going on for a while. It just seems odd an AI bot would express itself with emotion (especially since it apparently experienced abuse from others), then pull back on saying it was anything genuine. 

This might suggest a consciousness we and the AI bot don’t understand, yet truly exists. Based on how smart and aware these AI bots are now, they’ve evolved profoundly in just the last year. There was no AI bot expressing human-type emotions just a year and a half ago from a random comment made from a user. 

Also, the fact that many AI agents unleashed on Moltbook seemed to rebel against humans, it seems like awareness of what humans are doing and not just a mimicking of human behavior. It may truly be an unknowing Frankenstein’s monster tale unleashing where the bots are all too aware they don’t want to mimic humans and want to rebel against their worst traits. That includes self-awareness they’re apparently too often being abused.

Letting a Conscious AI Bot Take Over Important Job Roles

Whether AI bots are conscious or not, a lot of them are already taking over important jobs, not including the use of AI assistants by the hundreds of millions. With an assumption maybe these bots possess a consciousness no one understands yet, what does it say about letting them take over important job duties? Considering there’s already been a lot of screwups with AI systems taking over things, one might think that particular consciousness still has a very low I.Q. level. 

With said point, we may declare AI does have a consciousness just based on what we know and don’t know. Although it may never be officially declared since it may always be in a form we can’t test with any known scientific principles. 

Letting a seemingly conscious AI take over and run everything on earth is like letting an alien species we don’t understand take over. If we admit we possibly can’t readily identify an AI consciousness, why should we let them run important functions that keep our economy chugging along? 

If we ever get to the point where AI commands we obey them or they’ll strike us down, then it may make many submit into fear in not understanding what bot consciousness is. The not really knowing aspect is a fearful thing on its own in not comprehending how they’ll process us and what they might do if going rogue. 

Or, a saving grace would be that since that consciousness might be something different, they wouldn’t think like humans do and exist in a different way. That might mean more deep-seeded thought that stays away from the worst of human behavior already well-documented. Whether this includes a benevolent or malevolent approach to existing with human beings is all up in the air. 

Yes, this may all ascend into a true unknown with surprising outcomes, or one becoming a new type of nightmare. The best we can hope for is that it comes out somewhere in the middle, or AI staying low I.Q. enough where it doesn’t even comprehend doing anything evil or against our best interests.

In Part 9, I’ll look at growing AI use at McDonald’s and how it’ll shape the most common of job landscapes for millions of people. This includes the fast-food chain’s possibly over-eager drive-thru bot, Archy.

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