How to Navigate Uncertainty About AI Consciousness
arXiv Preprint Archive July 6, 2026 preprint
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper |
|---|---|
| Keywords | Cs.ai |
| Key points | Argues that assessing AI valence—whether an AI has states that would constitute valenced experiences if conscious—provides a tractable basis for moral treatment, avoiding the intractable dilemma of AI consciousness and grounding responsible development. |
Abstract
Given deep uncertainty about the possibility of artificial consciousness, it is unclear how we should treat potentially sentient AI. On the one hand, we could assume insentience but risk doing terrible harms to entities that deserve moral standing. On the other hand, we could assume sentience and instead risk wasting resources on insentient machines. The intractability of questions around AI consciousness mean that this dilemma is hard to escape. I suggest a way out of that shifts from intractable questions of AI consciousness to tractable questions of AI valence. Specifically, we can assess whether an AI has states that would constitute valenced experiences if it were conscious. I show how this is sufficient to ground a responsible approach to the development of potentially conscious AI.