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Cited by 48Social Robot Interaction and HRIInnovative Human-Technology InteractionCybernetics and Technology in Society

Do You Mind? User Perceptions of Machine Consciousness

Open access
Scott, Ava Elizabeth, Neumann, Daniel, Niess, Jasmin, Woźniak, Paweł W.·2023·Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
DOI 10.1145/3544548.3581296
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Abstract

The prospect of machine consciousness cultivates controversy across media, academia, and industry. Assessing whether non-experts perceive technologies as conscious, and exploring the consequences of this perception, are yet unaddressed challenges in Human Computer Interaction (HCI). To address them, we surveyed 100 people, exploring their conceptualisations of consciousness and if and how they perceive consciousness in currently available interactive technologies. We show that many people already perceive a degree of consciousness in GPT-3, a voice chat bot, and a robot vacuum cleaner. Within participant responses we identified dynamic tensions between denial and speculation, thinking and feeling, interaction and experience, control and independence, and rigidity and spontaneity. These tensions can inform future research into perceptions of machine consciousness and the challenges it represents for HCI. With both empirical and theoretical contributions, this paper emphasises the importance of HCI in an era of machine consciousness, real, perceived or denied.

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Crossref · 10.1145/3544548.3581296

Cites

114 of 114 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

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  • Many people already assign some degree of consciousness to existing LLMs.

    “in practice, many people already assign some degree of consciousness to existing LLMs (Colombatto and Fleming, 2024;Guingrich and Graziano, 2024;Scott et al., 2023).”

    From Does It Make Sense to Speak of Introspection in Large Language Models? (2025) · cites this paper as Scott et al., 2023

  • There is converging evidence from studies employing different materials and measures that supports the findings.

    “However, we note converging evidence from studies employing different materials and measures (Scott et al. 2023).”

    From Folk psychological attributions of consciousness to large language models (2024) · cites this paper as Scott et al. 2023

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Related

Authors
Scott, A. E., Neumann, D., Niess, J., & Woźniak, P. W.
Affiliations
  • University College London (GB)
  • University of St.Gallen (CH)
  • University of Oslo (NO)
  • Chalmers University of Technology (SE)
ORCID
Venue
Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Publisher
ACM
Published
2023-04-19
Pages
1-19
DOI
10.1145/3544548.3581296
OpenAlex
W4366550433
Cited by
46
References
116
Citations by year
2026: 13 · 2025: 17 · 2024: 15 · 2023: 1
FWCI
23.02
Type
conference paper
Language
en
Open access
Licence
Locations
  • CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • UCL Discovery (University College London) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
  • Open access LMU (Ludwid Maxmilian's Universitat Munchen) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
  • Chalmers Research (Chalmers University of Technology) (submittedVersion)
  • Alexandria (UniSG) (University of St.Gallen) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
Funders
  • Swedish Research Council (2022-03196)
  • Leverhulme Trust (DS-2017-026)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Social Robot Interaction and HRI
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Human-Computer Interaction › Innovative Human-Technology Interaction
  • Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › History and Philosophy of Science › Cybernetics and Technology in Society
Keywords
artificial consciousness, user perception, GPT-3, chatbots, robot vacuum cleaners, human-robot interaction, AI ethics

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