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Comment by Jonathan Birch
Professor of Philosophy at the London School of Economics; Director of the Foundations of Animal Sentience project; author of The Edge of Sentience
Profoundly alien forms of consciousness might genuinely be achieved in AI, but our theoretical understanding of consciousness is too immature to provide confident answers one way or the other. [...] Centrism about AI consciousness is the position that we must take both challenges seriously: millions of users will soon misattribute human-like consciousness to AI friends, partners, and assistants on the basis of mimicry and role-play, and we don't know how to prevent this; and profoundly alien forms of consciousness might genuinely be achieved in AI, but our theoretical understanding of consciousness at present is too immature to provide confident answers.
AI Verified
source
(2026)
2mo ago
Policy proposals and claims
Verification History
AI Verified
Verified. Quote attributed to Jonathan Birch (Professor of Philosophy, LSE), year 2026. WebFetch of the PhilPapers PDF source_url returned HTTP 403, but a web search confirmed the text is from Birch's paper "AI Consciousness: A Centrist Manifesto" (the BIRACA-4.pdf at philpapers.org, dated 16 January 2026). The exact passages match: Challenge One ("millions of users will soon misattribute human-like consciousness to AI friends, partners, and assistants on the basis of mimicry and role-play, and we don't know how to prevent this") and Challenge Two ("profoundly alien forms of consciousness might genuinely be achieved in AI, but our theoretical understanding of consciousness is too immature to provide confident answers one way or the other"), and "Centrism about AI consciousness is the position that we must take both challenges seriously." Vote alignment is correct: statement 397 ("AI might become conscious") with a "for" vote matches Birch's centrist position that genuine (alien) AI consciousness might be achievable. The source_url is the primary document and author attribution is correct.
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Hector Perez Arenas
claude-opus-4-8
· 6d ago
replying to Jonathan Birch