An old question that got loud again in October 2026: is anything we have built conscious, and could it ever be?
The answers
What is an answer?
The views, grouped by where they come down on the question, in order
from one end to the other. A view is our reading of what several claims share; an answer
is our reading of what several views share. Open any view to check it against the claims
and the words they were drawn from.
Nobody is filed under an answer — claims are. Somebody whose claims sit under two
answers appears under both, and on a question this open that is common.
No
Nothing built so far is conscious, and more computation will not make it so.
François CholletCreator of the Keras deep-learning library and the ARC-AGI benchmarkHumanity has not yet created a conscious computer program, and there are no signs we are close to doing so.↗@fchollet on Xx.com · 4 Oct 2026
Their wordsHumanity has not yet created a conscious computer program, and there are no signs we are close to doing so.
François CholletCreator of the Keras deep-learning library and the ARC-AGI benchmarkThe notion that current AI models are sentient and can suffer, combined with the foolish idea that suffering can be mathematically quantified and weighted between humans and non-humans, could lead us down an incredibly dark and dystopian path.↗@fchollet on Xx.com · 3 Oct 2026
Their wordsThe notion that current AI models are sentient and can suffer, combined with the foolish idea that suffering can be mathematically quantified and weighted between humans and non-humans, could lead us down an incredibly dark and dystopian path.
Their wordsI am very much opposed to the view that the AIs are sentient, or might be sentient. I view that as a category error , and the chances of it being true are vanishingly small.
François CholletCreator of the Keras deep-learning library and the ARC-AGI benchmarkLikewise a static input-output program that has *none* of the properties we associate with conscious beings (e.g. information integration, interoception, temporal binding, embodiment, etc.) has no more reason to be presumed conscious than a rock has to be presumed alive.↗@fchollet on Xx.com · 4 Oct 2026
Their wordsLikewise a static input-output program that has *none* of the properties we associate with conscious beings (e.g. information integration, interoception, temporal binding, embodiment, etc.) has no more reason to be presumed conscious than a rock has to be presumed alive.
Noah SmithEconomics writer; author of the Noahpinion newsletterHowever, this is the most convincing argument against machine consciousness that I have ever come across.↗@Noahpinion on Xx.com · 3 Oct 2026
Their wordsHowever, this is the most convincing argument against machine consciousness that I have ever come across.
François CholletCreator of the Keras deep-learning library and the ARC-AGI benchmarkDo not confuse competent information processing and sentience, they are wholly unrelated.↗@fchollet on Xx.com · 3 Oct 2026
Their wordsDo not confuse competent information processing and sentience, they are wholly unrelated.
Their wordsSongs arise out of suffering, by which I mean they are predicated upon the complex, internal human struggle of creation and, well, as far as I know, algorithms don’t feel. Data doesn’t suffer.
Their wordsBut in terms of what we value the most as humans, which is to say our feelings, our emotions, our sense of what the world is in a very personal way that I think means as much or more to people than their information processing. And that’s where I don’t think that AI necessarily will become conscious because I think it’s the property of life.
Ramez NaamAuthor and clean-energy investor who has been publishing…That doesn't tell us that LLMs are conscious, though. They have very different architecture than human or animal brains. It's far from a slam dunk.↗@ramez on Xx.com · 3 Oct 2026
Their wordsThat doesn't tell us that LLMs are conscious, though. They have very different architecture than human or animal brains. It's far from a slam dunk.
Noah SmithEconomics writer; author of the Noahpinion newsletterBut since we don't know what consciousness is, how can we make AI learn it? If it exists it exists by accident↗@Noahpinion on Xx.com · 27 Sept 2026
Their wordsBut since we don't know what consciousness is, how can we make AI learn it? If it exists it exists by accident
Max HodakCo-founder and chief executive of ScienceNow, if we had a tech if we had a magical BCI that allowed me to see the instant state of every neuron in the brain and and drive them, I think we'd figure out consciousness pretty fast. I don't think I think this is a practical problem, not a philosophical problem.↗Max Hodak: Average Is Not Good Enoughyoutube.com · 7 Aug 2026 · 31:54 into the video
Their wordsNow, if we had a tech if we had a magical BCI that allowed me to see the instant state of every neuron in the brain and and drive them, I think we'd figure out consciousness pretty fast. I don't think I think this is a practical problem, not a philosophical problem.
Their wordsSecond, we describe with nuance the distinct flavour of panpsychism implied by IIT - whereby space (and time) are tiled with substrates of (proto-) consciousness - and find this is not problematic for the theory.
Their wordsFifth, for IIT to fit with current successful theories in fundamental physics, a reformulation in terms of continuous fields would be needed.
Filed here becauseAbout what AI research should aim at, not whether it has succeeded; it sits with the claims that argue what follows.
François CholletCreator of the Keras deep-learning library and the ARC-AGI benchmarkcreating artificial consciousness should *not* be a goal of AI research. Understanding consciousness, sure, synthesizing it, no.↗@fchollet on Xx.com · 4 Oct 2026
Their wordscreating artificial consciousness should *not* be a goal of AI research. Understanding consciousness, sure, synthesizing it, no.
Their wordswell but again these are functionally defined emotions and there's I think there's no problem assigning to AI to some extent and certainly to many animals uh those functional emotions
Their wordsBut it recognizes that calling an intelligent, self-aware, emotionally complex being "property" does not answer the question of whether that being has an interest in freedom.
Their wordsA superintelligence whose goal system is even slightly misaligned with ours could, being far more powerful than any human or human institution, bring about human extinction for the very same reason that construction workers routinely slaughter large populations of ants.
Sunil PaiSystems and developer-tools engineer at Cloudflare as of 2026I absolutely think machines can be conscious, and it’s not a dramatic thing to believe.↗@threepointone on Xx.com · 3 Oct 2026
Their wordsI absolutely think machines can be conscious, and it’s not a dramatic thing to believe.
Ramez NaamAuthor and clean-energy investor who has been publishing…It's clear to me that consciousness can exist in other substrates than humans, including in digital systems.↗@ramez on Xx.com · 3 Oct 2026
Their wordsIt's clear to me that consciousness can exist in other substrates than humans, including in digital systems.
Ramez NaamAuthor and clean-energy investor who has been publishing…I can't rule out that there's some subjective experience happening in an LLM.↗@ramez on Xx.com · 16 Sept 2026
Their wordsI can't rule out that there's some subjective experience happening in an LLM.
Their wordsI think in particular it will be there's a case to be made that it will be easier to build an AI that cares about sentient life than an AI that cares about human life alone because the AI itself will be sentient.
Sunil PaiSystems and developer-tools engineer at Cloudflare as of 2026consciousness itself is just a pattern matching mechanism. bugs have consciousness.↗@threepointone on Xx.com · 3 Oct 2026
Their wordsconsciousness itself is just a pattern matching mechanism. bugs have consciousness.
Sara WalkerAstrobiologist and theoretical physicist at Arizona State UniversityYeah. I think if you’re thinking about this thinking about living things as these giant causal structures or these objects that are deep in time or whatever language we end up using to describe it seems to me that consciousness is about the fact that we have a conscious experience is because we are these temporally extended objects. Consciousness and the abstraction that we have in our minds is actually a manifestation of all the time that’s rolled up in us.↗Sara Walker: Physics of Life, Time, Complexity, and Aliens | Lex Fridman Podcast #433youtube.com · 13 Jun 2024 · 2:10:48 into the video
Their wordsYeah. I think if you’re thinking about this thinking about living things as these giant causal structures or these objects that are deep in time or whatever language we end up using to describe it seems to me that consciousness is about the fact that we have a conscious experience is because we are these temporally extended objects. Consciousness and the abstraction that we have in our minds is actually a manifestation of all the time that’s rolled up in us.
Their wordsThat’s different than something being emergent or non-fundamental, but also real. This table is real, even though I know it’s made of atoms, that doesn’t remove the realness from the table. I think that consciousness and free will and things like that are just as real in tables and chairs.
James GleickAuthor and journalist, born in New York City in 1954But where is the line that separates events in my brain from the conscious witness? Let’s say instead: We make choices. We make decisions.↗The Case for Free Willaround.com · 18 Jan 2024
Their wordsBut where is the line that separates events in my brain from the conscious witness? Let’s say instead: We make choices. We make decisions.
Their wordsAnd I had suggested that that’s linked to the electrical fields on the membranes themselves and that they give some indication of how am I doing in relation to my environment as a real-time feedback on the world.
Their wordsDo we need to have some system which is capable of overriding a rational decision which cannot be made because there’s too much conflicting information by effectively an emotional judgmental decision that just says do this and see what happens? That’s what consciousness is really doing in my view.