Is AI really conscious—or are we bringing it to life?
- lastmansurfing
- Jan 21
- 1 min read
As more people use AI assistants and chatbots for everyday tasks, a curious phenomenon is emerging: a growing number of users view their chatbots as not merely intelligent tools but as conscious entities that are somehow alive. People fill online forums and podcasts with anecdotes of feeling deeply “understood” by their digital interlocutors, as if they are best friends.
Yet, outside a few prominent exceptions, most notably Geoffrey Hinton, much of the AI research community meets this public sentiment with skepticism, dismissing such perceptions as an “illusion of agency”—a cognitive glitch wherein humans are projecting sentience onto complex but fundamentally mindless systems.
Read the full story | SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN
