Time to take AI consciousness seriously

Samuel Hammond · 27 May 2026 · secondbest.ca ↗

3 korrents from this piece

Samuel Hammond did not write this page.

Every claim below was made in this piece, quoted word for word and numbered in the order the piece makes them, so you can read it there rather than take our word for it. The sentence above each quote is our reading of the claim, not their wording. Each quote was checked against a stored copy of the page at build time; where the two differ, the quote is the fact.

Our reading
Frontier AI models plausibly have some form of consciousness or subjective experience.

Their wordsI consider the case for frontier AI models having some form of consciousness or subjective experience to be quite strong.
Our reading
Consciousness belongs only to simulations, not to the physical brains or computers running them.

Their wordsneither brains nor computers are conscious, as only simulations can be conscious.
Our reading
Pain and pleasure act as motivational backstops that keep reinforcement-learning agents inner-aligned.

Their wordsvalences like pain and pleasure have a natural account as motivational backstops for inner-aligning RL agents capable of mesa-optimization