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The people who think AI might become conscious

With a leap in the evolution of large language models, some leading thinkers are questioning whether AI might become sentient

That's clear from the good-natured but robust arguments among Prof Seth's own team of young AI specialists, computing experts, neuroscientists and philosophers, who are trying to answer one of the biggest questions in science and philosophy. Just as the search to find the "spark of life" that made inanimate objects come alive was abandoned in the 19th Century in favour of identifying how individual parts of living systems worked, the Sussex team is now adopting the same approach to consciousness. Returning to a more solemn tone, he says the small but significant threat of artificial consciousness is something he'd like the big players in the field to focus on more as part of serious attempts to advance our scientific understanding – but says that "unfortunately, we don't see any earnest efforts in this space".

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