Rapid progress in artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities has drawn fresh attention to the prospect of consciousness in AI. There is an urgent need for rigorous methods to assess AI systems for consciousness, but significant uncertainty about relevant issues in consciousness science. We present a method for assessing AI systems for consciousness that involves exploring what follows from...
Visual experience can sometimes depart from visual performance, providing a powerful lens into the mechanisms generating conscious perception. In one proposed dissociation—subjective inflation—unattended locations in the periphery appear stronger than attended ones despite equated performance. Subjective inflation has played a central role in motivating theories of consciousness that reject the...
Abstract We surveyed attendees at two leading conferences on consciousness, asking for their views on central issues concerning infant consciousness. These include questions about whether newborns are conscious, when consciousness and self-consciousness emerge, where in the brain the neural basis of infant consciousness is found, what sorts of consciousness infants may have, and how best to...
We surveyed 582 AI researchers who have published in leading AI venues and 838 nationally representative US participants about their views on the potential development of AI systems with subjective experience and how such systems should be treated and governed. When asked to estimate the chances that such systems will exist on specific dates, the median responses were 1% (AI researchers) and 5%...
Different theories explain how subjective experience arises from brain activity1,2. These theories have independently accrued evidence, but have not been directly compared3. Here we present an open science adversarial collaboration directly juxtaposing integrated information theory (IIT)4,5 and global neuronal workspace theory (GNWT)6-10 via a theory-neutral consortium11-13. The theory...
Different theories explain how subjective experience arises from brain activity1,2. These theories have independently accrued evidence, yet, confirmation bias and dependence on design choices hamper progress in the field3. Here, we present an open science adversarial collaboration which directly juxtaposes Integrated Information Theory (IIT)4,5 and Global Neuronal Workspace Theory (GNWT)6–10,...
There has recently been widespread discussion of whether large language models might be sentient. Should we take this idea seriously? I will break down the strongest reasons for and against. Given mainstream assumptions in the science of consciousness, there are significant obstacles to consciousness in current models: for example, their lack of recurrent processing, a global workspace, and...
The relationship between conscious experience and brain activity has intrigued scientists and philosophers for centuries. In the last decades, several theories have suggested different accounts for these relationships. These theories have developed in parallel, with little to no cross-talk among them. To advance research on consciousness, we established an adversarial collaboration between...
Does consciousness collapse the quantum wave function? This idea was taken seriously by John von Neumann and Eugene Wigner but is now widely dismissed. We develop the idea by combining a mathematical theory of consciousness (integrated information theory) with an account of quantum collapse dynamics (continuous spontaneous localization). Simple versions of the theory are falsified by the...
David Chalmers is a professor of philosophy and neural science at New York University. He received his PhD in philosophy and cognitive science from Indiana University in 1993 and has held positions at University of California, Santa Cruz, University of Arizona, and Australian National University. He helped to found the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness and co-directs the...
This chapter gives an overview of the projects facing a science of consciousness. Such a science must integrate third-person data about behavior and brain processes with first-person data about conscious experience. Empirical projects for integrating these data include those of contrasting conscious and unconscious processes, investigating the contents of consciousness, finding neural...
This chapter analyzes aspects of the relationship between consciousness and intentionality. It focuses on the phenomenal character and the intentional content of perceptual states, canvassing various possible relations among them. It argues that there is a good case for a sort of representationalism, although this may not take the form that its advocates often suggest. By mapping out some of...
This chapter addresses the question: how can we isolate the neural correlate of consciousness (NCC) in the absence of a “consciousness meter,” which measures consciousness directly? The obvious answer is that we rely on verbal reports and other behavioral indicators of consciousness. Importantly, the use of these indicators tacitly relies on pre-experimental principles that connect these...
This paper describes the efforts of those who work with informational machines and with informational analyses to provide a basis for understanding consciousness and for speculating on what it would take to make a conscious machine. Some of the origins of these considerations are covered and the contributions of several researchers are reviewed. A distinction is drawn between functional and...
Abstract Philosophers have reacted in different ways to the apparent explanatory gap between physical processes and consciousness. Some deny that any explanatory gap exists at all. Some hold that there is an explanatory gap for now, but that it will eventually be closed. Some hold that the explanatory gap corresponds to an ontological gap in nature. This chapter explores another reaction to the...
I will discuss one aspect of the role that neuroscience plays in the search for a theory of consciousness. Whether or not neuroscience can solve all the problems of consciousness singlehandedly, it undoubtedly has a major role to play. Recent years have seen striking progress in neurobiological research bearing on the problems of consciousness. The conceptual foundations of this sort of...