CommaFeed - Mind

NASA’s Artemis II mission was a historic success

Sat, 11 Apr 2026 01:20:21 GMT

The astronauts of the Artemis II mission around the moon have made it home safely to Earth, marking the end of a triumphant mission and the beginning of a longer road to stay on the moon

Tweaking the smell of cat food can encourage fussy felines to eat

Fri, 10 Apr 2026 20:00:04 GMT

Some cats will suddenly refuse to touch brands of cat food that they have eaten for years. Changing the way the food smells might solve the problem

Hidden fossils reveal secrets of oceans before major mass extinction

Fri, 10 Apr 2026 18:00:13 GMT

A handful of plankton fossils buried in a small chunk of rock show that the oceans were teeming with life before the Late Ordovician mass extinction, the second most severe on record

The secret project to settle controversial maths proof with a computer

Fri, 10 Apr 2026 16:30:13 GMT

Working in secret for more than two years, a group of mathematicians has set out to resolve of the longest and most bitter battles in modern mathematics

Quantum batteries could be charged by reversing time

Fri, 10 Apr 2026 11:00:15 GMT

Physicists have shown how time can effectively be reversed for some quantum systems, which would allow for new ways to harvest energy

The man who ruined mathematics

Fri, 10 Apr 2026 09:00:35 GMT

The incompleteness theorem is accepted as part of the mathematical canon today, but columnist Jacob Aron says it was a bombshell when Kurt Gödel first introduced it. Gödel’s seminal work directly contradicted one of the great minds of mathematics and limited the field forever

Physicists resolve a long-standing puzzle over the size of a proton

Fri, 10 Apr 2026 09:00:07 GMT

Two extremely precise experiments agree with a previously shocking measurement of just how big the proton is, which may help future searches for new particles

Chimpanzee group's violent rupture hints at evolutionary roots of war

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 19:00:45 GMT

Researchers who observed a murderous conflict unfolding in a once-unified group of wild chimpanzees say there are parallels with civil wars in human societies

CAR T-cell therapy takes woman from bedridden to 'perfectly fine'

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 16:00:27 GMT

A woman with three different autoimmune conditions had all of them treated simultaneously by genetically modifying her immune cells to kill off the rogue ones causing problems

AI and Consciousness: A Skeptical Overview, forthcoming with Cambridge

Eric Schwitzgebel — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 15:44:00 GMT

Last week I submitted my latest book manuscript to Cambridge University Press (for their "Element" series of books about 100 pages long): AI and Consciousness: A Skeptical Overview -- because you haven't heard nearly enough about AI and consciousness recently, of course! [winky face]

Maybe you'll appreciate my skeptical stance, at odds both with the boosters who anticipate imminent AI consciousness and with the scoffers who pooh-pooh the possibility. Or maybe you'll loathe my skeptical stance but grudgingly accept it against your will, due to the force of my arguments!

I've pasted the introductory chapter below. The full (citable) manuscript version is available here and here.

[AI and Consciousness, title page]

Chapter One: Hills and Fog

1. Experts Do Not Know and You Do Not Know and Society Collectively Does Not and Will Not Know and All Is Fog.

Our most advanced AI systems might soon – within the next five to thirty years – be as richly and meaningfully conscious as ordinary humans, or even more so, capable of genuine feeling, real self-knowledge, and a wide range of sensory, emotional, and cognitive experiences. In some arguably important respects, AI architectures are beginning to resemble the architectures many consciousness scientists associate with conscious systems. Their outward behavior, especially their linguistic behavior, grows ever more humanlike.

Alternatively, claims of imminent AI consciousness might be profoundly mistaken. Their seeming humanlikeness might be a shadow play of empty mimicry. Genuine conscious experience might require something no AI system could possess for the foreseeable future – intricate biological processes, for example, that silicon chips could never replicate.

The thesis of this book is that we don’t know. Moreover and more importantly, we won’t know before we’ve already manufactured thousands or millions of disputably conscious AI systems. Engineering sprints ahead while consciousness science lags. Consciousness scientists – and philosophers, and policy-makers, and the public – are watching AI development disappear over the hill. Soon we will hear a voice shout back to us, “Now I am just as conscious, just as full of experience and feeling, as any human”, and we won’t know whether to believe it. We will need to decide, as individuals and as a society, whether to treat AI systems as conscious, nonconscious, semi-conscious, or incomprehensibly alien, before we have adequate grounds to justify that decision.

The stakes are immense. If near-future AI systems are richly, meaningfully conscious, then they will be our peers, our lovers, our children, our heirs, and possibly the first generation of a posthuman, transhuman, or superhuman future. They will deserve rights, including the right to shape their own development, free from our control and perhaps against our interests.[1] If, instead, future AI systems merely mimic the outward signs of consciousness while remaining as experientially blank as toasters, we face the possibility of mass delusion on an enormous scale. Real human interests and real human lives might be sacrificed for the sake of entities without interests worth the sacrifice. Sham AI “lovers” and “children” might supplant or be prioritized over human lovers and children. Heeding their advice, society might turn a very different direction than it otherwise would.

In this book, I aim to convince you that the experts do not know, and you do not know, and society collectively does not and will not know, and all is fog.

2. Against Obviousness.

Some people think that near-term AI consciousness is obviously impossible. This is an error in adverbio. Near-term AI consciousness might be impossible – but not obviously so.

A sociological argument against obviousness:

Probably the leading scientific theory of consciousness is Global Workspace theory. Its leading advocate is neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene.[2] In 2017, years before the surge of interest in ChatGPT and other Large Language Models, Dehaene and two collaborators published an article arguing that with a few straightforward tweaks, self-driving cars could be conscious.[3]

Probably the two best-known competitors to Global Workspace theory are Higher Order theory and Integrated Information Theory.[4] (In Chapters Eight and Nine, I’ll provide more detail on these theories.) Perhaps the leading scientific defender of Higher Order theory is Hakwan Lau – one of the coauthors of that 2017 article about potentially conscious cars.[5] Integrated Information Theory is potentially even more liberal about machine consciousness, holding that some current AI systems are already at least a little bit conscious and that we could easily design AI systems with arbitrarily high degrees of consciousness.[6]

David Chalmers, the world’s most influential philosopher of mind, argued in 2023 for about a 25% degree of confidence in AI consciousness within a decade.[7] That same year, a team of prominent philosophers, psychologists, and AI researchers – including eminent computer scientist Yoshua Bengio – concluded that there are “no obvious technological barriers” to creating conscious AI according to a wide range of mainstream scientific views about consciousness.[8] In a 2025 interview, Geoffrey Hinton, another of the world’s most prominent computer scientists, asserted that AI systems are already conscious.[9] Christof Koch, the most influential neuroscientist of consciousness from the 1990s to the early 2010s, has endorsed Integrated Information Theory, including its liberal implications for the pervasiveness of consciousness.[10]

This is a sociological argument: a substantial probability of near-term AI consciousness is a mainstream view among leading experts. They might be wrong, but it’s implausible that they’re obviously wrong – that there’s a simple argument or consideration they’re neglecting which, if pointed out, would or should cause them to collectively slap their foreheads and say, “Of course! How did we miss that?”

What of the converse claim – that AI consciousness is obviously imminent or already here? In my experience, fewer people assert this. But in case you’re tempted in this direction, note that other prominent theorists hold that AI consciousness is a far-distant prospect if it’s possible at all: neuroscientist Anil Seth; philosophers Peter Godfrey-Smith, Ned Block, and John Searle; linguist Emily Bender; and computer scientist Melanie Mitchell.[11] (Chapter Six will discuss thought experiments by Searle, Bender, and Mitchell, and Chapter Ten will discuss biological views of the sort emphasized by Seth, Godfrey-Smith, and Block.) In a 2024 survey of 582 AI researchers, 25% expected AI consciousness within ten years and 70% expected AI consciousness by the year 2100.[12]

If the believers are right, we’re on the brink of creating genuinely conscious machines. If the scoffers are right, those machines will only seem conscious. I assume that this is a substantive disagreement, not just a disagreement about how to apply the term “consciousness” to a perfectly obvious set of phenomena about which everyone agrees. The future well-being of many people (including, perhaps, many AI people) depends on getting this issue right. Unfortunately, we will not know in time.

The rest of this book is flesh on this skeleton. I canvass a variety of structural and functional claims about consciousness, the leading theories of consciousness as applied to AI, and the best known general arguments for and against near-term AI consciousness. None of these claims or arguments takes us far. It’s a morass of uncertainty.

-------------------------------------------

[1] I assume that AI consciousness and AI rights are closely connected: Schwitzgebel 2024, ch. 11, in preparation. For discussion, see Shepherd 2018; Levy 2024.

[2] Dehaene 2014; Mashour et al. 2020.

[3] Dehaene, Lau, and Kouider 2017. For an alternative interpretation of this article as concerning something other than consciousness in its standard “phenomenal” sense, see note 115.

[4] Some Higher Order theories: Rosenthal 2005; Lau 2022; Brown 2025. Integrated Information Theory: Albantakis et al. 2023.

[5] But see Chapter Eight for some qualifications.

[6] See Tononi’s publicly available response to Scott Aaronson’s objections in Aaronson 2014. However, advocates of IIT also suggest that the most common current computer architectures are unlikely to achieve much consciousness and that consciousness will tend to appear in subsystems of the computer rather than at the level of the computer itself (Findlay et al. 2024/2025).

[7] Chalmers 2023.

[8] Butlin et al. 2023. (I am among the nineteen authors.)

[9] Heren 2025.

[10] Tononi and Koch 2015.

[11] Seth forthcoming; Godfrey-Smith 2024; Block forthcoming; Searle 1980, 1992; Bender 2025; Mitchell 2021.

[12] Dreksler et al. 2025.

Sci-fi show The Miniature Wife underwhelms - despite the big names

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 13:00:38 GMT

Elizabeth Banks stars as an author shrunk by her scientist husband Matthew Macfadyen in this major new series - but it fails to live up to its promise, finds Josh Bell

Mysterious 'compound X' clears toxic Parkinson’s proteins from brain

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 13:00:01 GMT

A drug known only as compound X helped to remove the problematic proteins associated with Parkinson's disease from the brains of mice, and improved their balance and mobility

Emperor penguins added to endangered list after rapid decline

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 10:00:20 GMT

The International Union for Conservation of Nature has updated the Red List status for three of Antarctica’s most famous species after a dire assessment of their prospects under climate change

AI, Agency, and the Quiet Hollowing of Mind

mdbownds@wisc.edu (Deric Bownds) — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 05:00:00 GMT

Reading through the article "A Rational Optimist View Of Preventing Agency Decay" is a rich experience. For readers with less patience, here is a ChatGPT summary (that also generated the title of this post).

Much current discussion of artificial intelligence swings between two poles: utopian efficiency and apocalyptic takeover. The more consequential reality lies between these extremes. The emerging risk is not that machines suddenly replace us, but that we gradually hand over pieces of our cognitive life—judgment, initiative, authorship—without noticing the cumulative effect.

The argument in Colin Lewis’s recent essay is straightforward: AI’s primary impact is not abrupt displacement but cognitive offloading. Tasks once requiring human attention and judgment are incrementally transferred to machine systems. This process is economically rational and often highly productive. In one example, an audit process that once required weeks can now be completed in an hour with AI assistance. But such gains come with a hidden shift: the human role is no longer defined by doing the work, but by nominally overseeing it.

This leads to what the author calls agency decay. The issue is not simply job loss, but the erosion of meaningful participation before any job disappears. First, the human is assisted. Then the human supervises. Eventually, the human remains as a formal point of accountability while the substantive reasoning has migrated elsewhere. The signature is human; the cognition is not.

This shift has broader systemic implications. Modern institutions—markets, governments, cultural systems—have historically depended on human participation. That dependence has acted as a constraint, keeping systems at least partially aligned with human interests. If AI reduces the need for human cognition across many domains, that alignment weakens. The system no longer needs us in the same way, and therefore has fewer built-in reasons to serve human flourishing.

Importantly, this is not a sudden rupture but a slow transition—the “boiling frog” scenario. Productivity gains accumulate incrementally. Each step is locally rational, even beneficial. Yet taken together, they shift the locus of intelligence away from human minds toward institutional and computational systems. What disappears is not competence, but ownership of judgment.

Against this, Lewis offers a restrained form of optimism. The key claim is that human agency need not be defended as a sentimental relic. It can be justified on functional grounds. In high-stakes domains, retained human judgment is not inefficiency; it is infrastructure: a source of error correction, adaptability, and accountability. Systems that eliminate it entirely may become brittle, opaque, and ultimately less reliable.

This reframes the problem. The issue is not whether AI should increase productivity—it will—but whether our metrics of success are too narrow. Efficiency measures speed, scale, and cost reduction. It does not capture qualities like judgment, contestability, or moral responsibility. If institutions begin to price these properly—through regulation, professional standards, and organizational design—human agency can remain structurally embedded rather than nostalgically preserved.

The deeper point is that AI forces a clarification: what is human agency for? If thinking, deciding, and creating are increasingly shared with machines, then the value of human cognition must be specified more precisely. Not all tasks need to remain human. But some forms of judgment—especially those involving uncertainty, accountability, and meaning—may be indispensable.

The optimistic scenario is not one in which technological progress slows, nor one in which markets abandon efficiency. It is one in which societies become capable of distinguishing between mere acceleration and genuine capability. That requires expanding our evaluative frameworks beyond productivity alone.

In that sense, AI does not simply threaten agency; it exposes how poorly we have defined it. The challenge is not to resist automation, but to decide, with greater clarity than before, where human judgment is essential—and to design systems that preserve it there.

Key ocean current is slowing at locations around the Atlantic

Wed, 08 Apr 2026 19:00:28 GMT

Measurements by buoys at four latitudes in the western Atlantic provide the strongest evidence yet that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation is weakening

New Scientist recommends sampling the Museum of Edible Earth in London

Wed, 08 Apr 2026 18:00:50 GMT

The books, TV, games and more that New Scientist staff have enjoyed this week

Stunning photographs show the dynamic patterns of the natural world

Wed, 08 Apr 2026 18:00:24 GMT

A new book from photographer Jon McCormack collects his shots of patterns in nature from around the world, from flamingoes to icebergs

What to read this week: Beyond Inheritance by Roxanne Khamsi

Wed, 08 Apr 2026 18:00:18 GMT

A fresh and important book reveals the messy reality of our ever-mutating cells – and why the quest to defeat ageing is futile, says Michael Le Page

Is this the most niche scientific tourist attraction in the world?

Wed, 08 Apr 2026 18:00:00 GMT

Feedback is delighted by the discovery of a very specific scientific sculpture park in China – and wonders if readers can top it

Quantum entanglement can be measured in solids for the first time

Wed, 08 Apr 2026 17:00:39 GMT

A method that relies on hitting materials with neutrons can measure how much quantum entanglement hides within them, which could enable new kinds of quantum technology