# AI and Consciousness

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.09858 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.09858/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 7 of its 126 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 10 Oct 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 7 of 7)

- [Why AI is Harder Than We Think](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.12871/) (2021)
- [Integrated information theory (IIT) 4.0: Formulating the properties of phenomenal existence in physical terms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.14787/) (2022)
- [Creating a Large Language Model of a Philosopher](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.01339/) (2023)
- [Is artificial consciousness achievable? Lessons from the human brain](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.04540/) (2024)
- [Measuring Integrated Information: Comparison of Candidate Measures in Theory and Simulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.09373/) (2018)
- [Agnosticism About Artificial Consciousness](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.13145/) (2024)
- [How (and Why) to Think that the Brain is Literally a Computer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.12032/) (2022)

## Abstract (arXiv)

This is a skeptical overview of the literature on AI consciousness. We will soon create AI systems that are conscious according to some influential, mainstream theories of consciousness but are not conscious according to other influential, mainstream theories of consciousness. We will not be in a position to know which theories are correct and whether we are surrounded by AI systems as richly and meaningfully conscious as human beings or instead only by systems as experientially blank as toasters. None of the standard arguments either for or against AI consciousness takes us far. Table of Contents Chapter One: Hills and Fog Chapter Two: What Is Consciousness? What Is AI? Chapter Three: Ten Possibly Essential Features of Consciousness Chapter Four: Against Introspective and Conceptual Arguments for Essential Features Chapter Five: Materialism and Functionalism Chapter Six: The Turing Test and the Chinese Room Chapter Seven: The Mimicry Argument Against AI Consciousness Chapter Eight: Global Workspace Theories and Higher Order Theories Chapter Nine: Integrated Information, Local Recurrence, Associative Learning, and Iterative Natural Kinds Chapter Ten: Does Biological Substrate Matter? Chapter Eleven: The Leapfrog Hypothesis, Strange Intelligence, and the Social Semi-Solution