How do we know if AI is conscious? - Varsity Online

date: 2026-11-13

themes: ai-consciousness

source: Varsity Online

link: https://news.google.com/rss/articles/CBMiUEFVX3lxTFBwcElQTTJzRVBqOVZUQXhIdHEwSnpaeHgxVm5tSVk4dHhROE94dkljU3p1M0R6R2dtNkZWQmxkc2o2aFFqRDk0MDlnbF9yT01z?oc=5

enrichment: record(s) 22706

How do we know if AI is conscious? Varsity Online

Whether AI is conscious seems to be the darling question, but it's not the one that creates urgency. Personally, I feel that granting the label of consciousness to AI before animals and event plants does a great disservice to those entities, but again - that's not what matters. What matters is that even the experts in the field I've spoken to can't explain exactly how decisions are made, what memories are planted, what data they have access to, how AI hallucinations occur... Traditional software has an absolutely predictable logic flow. The mere fact that AI discards that predictable logic flow in favor of statistical probability should have been enough. Sure, there are plenty of cases where a 90% solution is sufficient, if not to solve a problem, to at least move a solution foward. But putting AI at the helm of things like air traffic control or financial systems, where a 90% solution is simply insufficient, is a disaster waiting to happen.