Artificial consciousness
Abstract
Rapid advancements in large language models (LLMs) have renewed interest in the question of whether consciousness can arise in an artificial system, like a digital computer. The general consensus is that LLMs are not conscious. This paper evaluates the main arguments against artificial consciousness in LLMs and argues that none of them show what they intend. However strong our intuitions against artificial consciousness are, they currently lack rational support.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Cites
I.—COMPUTING MACHINERY AND INTELLIGENCE
TURING, A. M. (1950) · Mind · doi:10.1093/mind/lix.236.433 · Cited by 10,290 · cited 1× · see citing works
“Turing (1950) suggested that machines would have achieved intelligence when they could win The Imitation Game, that is, when a human interlo-cutor could not di ff erentiate the machine ’ s response to a question from a human ’ s.”
Nagel, T. (1974) · The Philosophical Review · doi:10.2307/2183914 · Cited by 7,440 · see citing works
On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big? 🦜
Bender, E. M., Gebru, T., McMillan-Major, A., & Shmitchell, S. (2021) · Proceedings of the 2021 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency · doi:10.1145/3442188.3445922 · Cited by 6,988 · cited 3× · see citing works
“They and their colleagues allege that LLMs carry signi fi cant risks for human society, some of which have already come to pass (Bender et al. 2021).”
InfluentialSearle, J. R. (1980) · Behavioral and Brain Sciences · doi:10.1017/s0140525x00005756 · Cited by 6,954 · see citing works
An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation
de Champs, E. (2017) · HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe) · Cited by 6,656 · see citing works
More Is Different: Broken symmetry and the nature of the hierarchical structure of science.
Anderson, P. W. (1972) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.177.4047.393 · Cited by 4,018 · see citing works
On a confusion about a function of consciousness
Block, N. (1995) · Behavioral and Brain Sciences · doi:10.1017/s0140525x00038188 · Cited by 3,364 · see citing works
Generative Agents: Interactive Simulacra of Human Behavior
Park, J. S., O'Brien, J., Cai, C. J., Morris, M. R., Liang, P., & Bernstein, M. S. (2023) · Proceedings of the 36th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology · doi:10.1145/3586183.3606763 · Cited by 2,187 · see citing works
Facing up to the problem of consciousness
Chalmers, D. J. (1996) · Toward a Science of Consciousness · doi:10.7551/mitpress/6860.003.0003 · Cited by 1,966 · see citing works
Integrated information theory: from consciousness to its physical substrate
Tononi, G., Boly, M., Massimini, M., & Koch, C. (2016) · Nature Reviews Neuroscience · doi:10.1038/nrn.2016.44 · Cited by 1,727 · see citing works
Emergent Abilities of Large Language Models
Wei, J., Tay, Y., Bommasani, R., Raffel, C., Zoph, B., Borgeaud, S., Yogatama, D., Bosma, M., Zhou, D., Metzler, D., et al. (2022) · arXiv · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2206.07682 · Cited by 1,264 · see citing works
Mindware: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Cognitive Science
Clark, A. (2000) · Cited by 630 · see citing works
Beyond the Imitation Game: Quantifying and extrapolating the capabilities of language models
Srivastava, A., Rastogi, A., Rao, A., Shoeb, A. A. M., Abid, A., Fisch, A., Brown, A. R., Santoro, A., Gupta, A., Garriga-Alonso, A., et al. (2022) · arXiv · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2206.04615 · Cited by 569 · see citing works
Chalmers, D. J. (2008) · Oxford University Press eBooks · doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199544318.003.0011 · Cited by 417 · see citing works
Corning, P. A. (2005) · University of Chicago Press eBooks · doi:10.7208/chicago/9780226116334.003.0006 · Cited by 256 · see citing works
Consciousness in Artificial Intelligence: Insights from the Science of Consciousness
Butlin, P., Long, R., Elmoznino, E., Bengio, Y., Birch, J., Constant, A., Deane, G., Fleming, S. M., Frith, C., Ji, X., et al. (2023) · arXiv · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2308.08708 · Cited by 196 · cited 5× · see citing works
“Some LLMs have been incorporated into more sophisticated tools that are modeled after human cognitive architecture, and have demonstrated indicators of consciousness such as attention, agency and memory (to name just a few) (Butlin et al. 2023; Chalmers 2023).”
InfluentialCould a Large Language Model be Conscious?
Chalmers, D. J. (2023) · arXiv · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2303.07103 · Cited by 143 · cited 4× · see citing works
“In arguments both for and against arti fi cial consciousness, one popular approach is to look for hallmarks of consciousness in us (Butlin et al. 2023; Chalmers 2023).”
InfluentialDeep learning and the global workspace theory
VanRullen, R., & Kanai, R. (2021) · Trends in Neurosciences · doi:10.1016/j.tins.2021.04.005 · Cited by 128 · see citing works
From task structures to world models: what do LLMs know?
Yildirim, I., & Paul, L. A. (2024) · Trends in Cognitive Sciences · doi:10.1016/j.tics.2024.02.008 · Cited by 109 · see citing works
Francken, J. C., Beerendonk, L., Molenaar, D., Fahrenfort, J. J., Kiverstein, J. D., Seth, A. K., & van Gaal, S. (2022) · Neuroscience of Consciousness · doi:10.1093/nc/niac011 · Cited by 102 · cited 2× · see citing works
“The survey showed that ‘ there is no single theory that the majority of the respondents currently endorse ’ (Francken et al. 2022, 9).”
The feasibility of artificial consciousness through the lens of neuroscience
Aru, J., Larkum, M. E., & Shine, J. M. (2023) · Trends in Neurosciences · doi:10.1016/j.tins.2023.09.009 · Cited by 98 · see citing works
A virtual rodent predicts the structure of neural activity across behaviours
Aldarondo, D., Merel, J., Marshall, J. D., Hasenclever, L., Klibaite, U., Gellis, A., Tassa, Y., Wayne, G., Botvinick, M., & Ölveczky, B. P. (2024) · Nature · doi:10.1038/s41586-024-07633-4 · Cited by 70 · cited 1× · see citing works
“Exper-imenters with Google ’ s DeepMind recently created a virtual rodent that used deep reinforcement learning run on a neural network to imitate rodent behavior in a virtual body and world (Aldarondo et al. 2024).”
Ruis, L., Khan, A., Biderman, S., Hooker, S., Rocktäschel, T., & Grefenstette, E. (2023) · Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 36 · doi:10.52202/075280-0913 · Cited by 47 · see citing works
Designing AI with Rights, Consciousness, Self-Respect, and Freedom
Schwitzgebel, E., & Garza, M. (2020) · Ethics of Artificial Intelligence · doi:10.1093/oso/9780190905033.003.0017 · Cited by 41 · see citing works
Ruis, L., Khan, A., Biderman, S., et al. (2022) · arXiv (Cornell University) · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2210.14986 · Cited by 21 · see citing works
Schneider, S. M. (2019) · Princeton University Press eBooks · doi:10.2307/j.ctvfjd00r · Cited by 13 · see citing works
Towards Principled Evaluations of Sparse Autoencoders for Interpretability and ControlPreprint
Makelov, A., Lange, G., & Nanda, N. (2024) · arXiv (Cornell University) · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2405.08366 · Cited by 4 · see citing works
A Case for AI Consciousness: Language Agents and Global Workspace Theory
Goldstein, S., & Kirk-Giannini, C. D. (2024) · arXiv · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2410.11407 · Cited by 4 · see citing works
Flagged first, then by citations
Research works printed but not linked: 3
- Dennett, D. 2001. Sweet Dreams. Cambridge: MIT Press.
- Low Phillip. 2012. “Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness.” In Proceedings of the Francis Crick Memorial Conference 1–2.
- Schaeffer R. B. Miranda and S. Koyejo. 2023. Are Emergent Abilities of Large Language Models a Mirage? arXiv.Org April 28. https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.15004v2. · arXiv
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Progress in machine consciousness
Gamez, D. (2007) · Consciousness and Cognition · doi:10.1016/j.concog.2007.04.005 · Cited by 133 · see citing works
On the role of emotion in biological and robotic autonomy
Tom Ziemke, B. (2007) · Biosystems · doi:10.1016/j.biosystems.2007.05.015 · Cited by 111 · see citing works
Four-dimensional graded consciousness
Jonkisz, J., Wierzchoń, M., & Binder, M. (2017) · Frontiers in Psychology · doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00420 · Cited by 30 · see citing works
What are the computational correlates of consciousness?
Reggia, J. A., Katz, G. E., & Huang, D.-W. (2016) · Biologically Inspired Cognitive Architectures · doi:10.1016/j.bica.2016.07.009 · Cited by 22 · see citing works
There is no such thing as conscious artificial intelligence
Porębski, A., & Figura, J. (2025) · Humanities and Social Sciences Communications · doi:10.1057/s41599-025-05868-8 · Cited by 20 · see citing works
A model of emotion as patterned metacontrol
Sanz, R., Sánchez-Escribano, M. G., & Herrera, C. (2013) · Biologically Inspired Cognitive Architectures · doi:10.1016/j.bica.2013.02.001 · Cited by 11 · see citing works
MORAL ORTHOSES: A NEW APPROACH TO HUMAN AND MACHINE ETHICS
Dorobantu, M., & Wilks, Y. A. (2019) · Zygon® · doi:10.1111/zygo.12560 · Cited by 10 · see citing works
Can artificially intelligent agents really be conscious?
Pandey, S. C. (2018) · Sadhana · doi:10.1007/s12046-018-0887-x · Cited by 6 · see citing works
Attention, Consciousness, and Linguistic Cooperation with AI
Montemayor, C. (2021) · Journal of Artificial Intelligence and Consciousness · doi:10.1142/s270507852150017x · Cited by 4 · see citing works
ROBOTS WITH CONSCIOUSNESS: CREATING A THIRD NATURE
Mitterauer, B. (2013) · International Journal of Machine Consciousness · doi:10.1142/s1793843013500054 · Cited by 4 · see citing works
Is Phenomenal Consciousness Necessary for AGI? A Review of the Theoretical Landscape
Cea, I. (2025) · Lecture notes in computer science · doi:10.1007/978-3-032-00686-8_7 · Cited by 2 · see citing works
Taylor, J. G. (2009) · New Mathematics and Natural Computation · doi:10.1142/s1793005709001180 · Cited by 2 · see citing works
What Does it Mean to Have an Open Mind?
Metzinger, T. K., & Windt, J. (2016) · Open MIND, 2-vol. set · doi:10.7551/mitpress/10603.003.0003 · Cited by 2 · see citing works
An Outline for Determining the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence
Lucas, R. (2004) · Manusya Journal of Humanities · doi:10.1163/26659077-00704006 · Cited by 2 · see citing works
Radeljić, B. (2025) · Global Society · doi:10.1080/13600826.2025.2592708 · Cited by 2 · see citing works
Are Attributions of Consciousness to AI Chatbots Epistemically Innocent?
Peters, U. (2026) · Minds and Machines · doi:10.1007/s11023-026-09795-8
3. How robots acquire their behaviour
(2014) · Advances in interaction studies · doi:10.1075/ais.7.03ch3
(2014) · Advances in interaction studies · doi:10.1075/ais.7.07ch7
Pitrat, J. (2009) · Wiley eBooks · doi:10.1002/9780470611791.biblio
- Authors
- Prettyman, A.
- Affiliations
- Bryn Mawr College (US)
- Corresponding author
- Prettyman, Adrienne
- ORCID
- Prettyman, Adrienne
- Venue
- Inquiry
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 2024-12-23
- Volume
- 69
- Issue
- 6
- Pages
- 2964-2981
- ISSN
- 0020-174X (ISSN-L)
- 1502-3923
- OpenAlex
- W4405702152
- Cited by
- 18
- References
- 28
- Citations by year
- 2025: 3 · 2021: 1 · 2019: 1 · 2018: 1 · 2017: 1 · 2016: 2 · 2014: 2 · 2013: 2
- FWCI
- 1.23
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Inquiry (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Philosophy and Theoretical Science
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › History and Philosophy of Science › Cybernetics and Technology in Society
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Artificial Intelligence › Psychiatry, Mental Health, Neuroscience
- Keywords
- artificial consciousness, large language models, digital computers, philosophy of mind
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review