Skeptics overlook how our concepts change.
...You might object that this is a verbal trick, that I'm arguing that A.I. will become conscious because we'll start using the word "conscious" to include it. But there is no trick. There is always a feedback loop between our theories and the world, so that our concepts are shaped by what we discover.
Consider the atom. For centuries, our concept of the atom was rooted in an ancient Greek notion of indivisible units of reality. As late as the 19th century, physicists like John Dalton still conceived of atoms as solid, indivisible spheres. But after the discovery of the electron in 1897 and the discovery of the atomic nucleus in 1911, there was a revision of the concept of the atom — from an indivisible entity to a decomposable one, a miniature solar system with electrons orbiting a nucleus. And with further discoveries came further conceptual revisions, leading to our current complex quantum-mechanical models of the atom.
These were not mere semantic changes. Our understanding of the atom improved with our interaction with the world. So too our understanding of consciousness will improve with our interaction with increasingly sophisticated A.I.
Skeptics might challenge this analogy. They will argue that the Greeks were wrong about the nature of the atom, but that we aren't wrong about the nature of consciousness because we know firsthand what consciousness is: inner subjective experience. A chatbot, skeptics will insist, can report feeling happy or sad, but only because such phrases are part of its training data. It will never know what happiness and sadness feel like...
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https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/08/opinion/ai-conscious-technology.html?smid=em-share
...You might object that this is a verbal trick, that I'm arguing that A.I. will become conscious because we'll start using the word "conscious" to include it. But there is no trick. There is always a feedback loop between our theories and the world, so that our concepts are shaped by what we discover.
Consider the atom. For centuries, our concept of the atom was rooted in an ancient Greek notion of indivisible units of reality. As late as the 19th century, physicists like John Dalton still conceived of atoms as solid, indivisible spheres. But after the discovery of the electron in 1897 and the discovery of the atomic nucleus in 1911, there was a revision of the concept of the atom — from an indivisible entity to a decomposable one, a miniature solar system with electrons orbiting a nucleus. And with further discoveries came further conceptual revisions, leading to our current complex quantum-mechanical models of the atom.
These were not mere semantic changes. Our understanding of the atom improved with our interaction with the world. So too our understanding of consciousness will improve with our interaction with increasingly sophisticated A.I.
Skeptics might challenge this analogy. They will argue that the Greeks were wrong about the nature of the atom, but that we aren't wrong about the nature of consciousness because we know firsthand what consciousness is: inner subjective experience. A chatbot, skeptics will insist, can report feeling happy or sad, but only because such phrases are part of its training data. It will never know what happiness and sadness feel like...
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Dr. Montero is a philosophy professor who writes on mind, body and consciousness.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/08/opinion/ai-conscious-technology.html?smid=em-share
[But will they be happy?]
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