Could AI Become Conscious? Susan Schneider Talks to The Sun

Zeeya Merali

Dario Amodei, Anthropic’s CEO, very recently published an essay called We Must Pace the Frontier. The argument is in the title. “We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models,” he writes, and later that day OpenAI’s Sam Altman said much the same.

Lorraine Ford

Once they debated how many angels could dance on the head of a pin; these days the same people debate the potential for AI consciousness.

Of course, there are no such things as angels, and there is no such thing as computer/ AI consciousness, and the whole discussion is just appalling nonsense.

Lorraine Ford

Computers/ AIs are not conscious, and can never be conscious.

The idea that computers/ AIs could be conscious, or genuinely agentic, is just a mental illusion.

And a mind full of mental illusions about computers/AIs is no way to deal with any problems that computers/AIs might pose.

Lorraine Ford

There is no “combination problem of consciousness”:
With personal consciousness, and all consciousness is individual and personal, many, many things are happening simultaneously. I.e. the logical “AND” and “IS TRUE” symbols are required in order to symbolically represent consciousness of simultaneous items of information about self, and one’s surroundings.

But there is no so-called “combination problem of consciousness”, because “combination” (represented using “AND” and “IS TRUE” symbols) is already fundamental to the physics of the world. So, the following is how one should symbolically represent the “law of nature” equations of physics:

(equation1 AND equation2 AND equation3 AND equation4 AND … ) IS TRUE .

Time:
Knowledge of what is simultaneous is the foundation for knowledge of what is not simultaneous. I.e. individual consciousness is the ONLY possible foundation for the Time category, i.e. an actual TIME DIMENSION would be superfluous. Individuals, from particles, atoms, molecules, to cells and other living things, are necessarily conscious of simultaneous items of information about oneself, and oneself’s surroundings.

Lorraine Ford

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-09-19/young-people-against-use-of-artificial-intelligence-your-say/107151886 The people versus AI: Young people pushing back against artificial intelligence:

… Ms Humphreys is studying a double degree in International Relations and International Business at Perth's Curtin University, which encourages the "ethical" use of AI. She's part of a generation that grew up fluent in technology, and one that studies show is increasingly hostile to it. "I think all kids are feeling like this … we're scared, we don't want it to affect us long term, and we don't want to live in a world that's run by robots," she said. "It feels like a cheat code to me. It feels like I'm not going to be as smart as the people who are currently in the field that I want to be in — because of AI."

… But AI isn't going anywhere, no matter how vociferously its protesters — many of whom have taken on the tongue-in-cheek name of decelerators or "decels" — may argue the point. Jenson Rainbird, a 16-year-old high school student from Melbourne, is happy to take part in the technical deceleration by avoiding AI as much as possible. "My [friendship] group vehemently hates AI — we do not like it one bit," he said. He's tried to cut it out of his life, though it still creeps in through Google searches and other study tools. … Where Jenson Rainbird avoids AI, his father, Justin, has gone the other way entirely. "If you don't get on board, you're going to fall behind," Mr Rainbird said.

… It doesn't take long for Ingrid to run up a veritable laundry list of AI pitfalls: gender and racial bias, its contribution towards misogyny, ethical issues, and a feeling of generational powerlessness. But chief among her concerns are the environmental impacts. The amount of water required to cool Australia's fast-increasing pool of data centres has long been on the national agenda. "It ruins the environment," Ingrid said. "And we live in a drought-prone country already, so that's the major thing for me."

… There's a clip that has been doing the rounds on social media of comedian Ronny Chieng delivering a class day address to a bunch of graduating Harvard students. "Can I just say: f**k AI," he said, to a mixed round of applause and laughter. "I'm here to tell you the mission of your generation is to destroy AI." He read the room better than other graduate speakers, who have been booed for likening AI to "the next industrial revolution".

… In The Twilight Zone, the concept of free thought is what eventually pulls Don back from the brink. His new bride, Pat, pulls him from his reverie. "You have a mind, a wonderful mind. Don't destroy it trying to justify that cheap penny fortune machine to yourself," she said. …

Lorraine Ford

Is it just the old people who worry about AIs becoming conscious entities and taking over the world?

Younger people, who have grown up with computers, and programming computers, seem to have a better grip on reality than older people, when it comes to computers/ AIs. Younger people are seemingly NOT worried about AIs becoming conscious entities and taking over the world, because they know that that is a ridiculous scenario.

This is not to minimise the actual problems that AI is causing, but AIs becoming conscious entities and taking over the world is just a thought bubble, NOT an actual current or potential future problem.

Cristinel Stoica

See what Computer Science herself says about this in my new book Is Mind Just a Computation? How Computer Science Dispels the Myths of the Age of AI

Book cover

Lorraine Ford

Consciousness is about categories:
From the beginning, consciousness is about categories and categorising. Consciousness is about categories and the intensity/ quantity/ weight/ number value of the category. And consciousness is about the interrelationships between these categories.

Consciousness is basically about one’s surroundings:
Consciousness is matter’s categorised and interrelated, point-of-view, now, on-the-spot, information about its situation with respect to its surrounding matter. The higher-level consciousness of higher-level matter has a higher-level of analysis about the situation that matter finds itself in.

Consciousness is not the same as the manmade symbols used to represent it:
Actual low-level consciousness is different to the manmade symbols that physicists might use to represent the categories, numbers, and mathematical relationships that they have experimentally found. Actual low-level consciousness is not the categories, numbers and relationships of physics per se; actual low-level consciousness is knowledge of what categories, numbers and relationships are point-of-view, on-the-spot true. Similarly, higher-level consciousness is not the same as the manmade symbols, including words and sentences, that might be used to symbolically represent it, when writing or speaking about consciousness.

Manmade symbols used in computers:
In computers/ AIs, as well as the circuits and transistors and computer programs used to organise and implement the whole concept, there are only arrays of higher and lower voltages, where the voltages have been organised by people to symbolically represent manmade symbols, e.g. symbols for categories, numbers and relationships. So yeah, I guess that the computer/ AI is conscious of higher and lower instances of the voltage category. But the computer is not conscious of the fact that human beings are using these voltages to represent manmade symbols; and the computer is not conscious of how human beings would interpret these manmade symbols.

Lorraine Ford

All the education in the world. And yet people still fail to notice that they themselves are using a type of manmade physical tool day in and day out. The physical tool is manmade written (on a physical screen or physical paper) and spoken (using the physical air waves) word, sentence, and other symbols. Written and spoken words and sentences are a manmade tool. Conscious and intelligent human beings continually produce the physical tool, and other conscious and intelligent human beings continually interpret the physical tool.

In a computer/ AI, these manmade physical tools (physical word, sentence, and other symbols) are simply re-symbolised as physical voltages, and the physical voltages are then manipulated via the manmade computer tool, and the manmade computer programs, before finally being converted back into physical word, sentence and other symbols. The only consciousness, intelligence and knowledge involved is human. The only consciousness, intelligence and knowledge ever required is human. And of course, computers/ AIs are only made possible because of human understanding of the way the world works and the underlying physics of the world.

Intelligent and conscious human beings make computers/ AIs, but the computers/ AIs are not themselves intelligent or conscious. Similarly, intelligent and conscious human beings make cars, planes, and spacecraft, but the cars, planes, and spacecraft are not themselves intelligent or conscious.

Lorraine Ford

Lorraine Ford
P.S.
It is IMPORTANT to make a correct assessment of the situation. It is IMPORTANT to understand that computers/ AIs are not conscious, and can never be conscious, if we are to properly deal with the issues that computers/ AIs raise.

Lorraine Ford

I think that there are a lot of old, and aging, fogeys out there who believe that manmade symbols “have meaning”.

But in fact, it is only the matter out of which the manmade symbols are made that has meaning in terms of measurable chemical and physical properties. Manmade symbols, which can be defined as manmade ARRANGEMENTS of matter, don’t “have meaning”; these manmade ARRANGEMENTS of matter don’t have any intrinsic physical or chemical properties; therefore symbols (manmade ARRANGEMENTS of matter) can have no intrinsic meaning from the point of view of the surrounding world, or from the point of view of the matter itself.

Contrary to the opinion of many prominent AI true-believers, with all their rusted-on followers, and all the old and aging fogeys, manmade symbols have no inherent meaning whatsoever. None.

Instead, manmade symbols are produced by people, and are INTERPRETED by people, in the same way that people acquire other information about their surroundings. I.e. people acquire information about their surroundings via their senses, information which they then analyse, collate, and interpret.

There can be no such thing as “artificial intelligence” because manmade symbols have no inherent meaning whatsoever.

Lorraine Ford

No communication is possible, and no computers/ AIs are possible, without utilising symbols, manmade physical symbols. Manmade physical symbols, i.e. written, spoken and voltage symbols, are the ONLY reason we can communicate, and the ONLY reason we can do computing.

But think about all the videos, blogs, talks and magazine articles. Think about all the well-known physicists, complexity theorists, and philosophers. All talking pure unadulterated nonsense about computers/ AIs having the potential to be conscious.

And all this nonsense is based on the mistaken, but tacit, assumption that the manmade symbols that computers/ AIs need in order to work possess intrinsic “meaning”, i.e. the mistaken, but tacit, assumption that the arrays and arrangements of voltages possess intrinsic “meaning”.

Lorraine Ford

Knowledge of real-world categories is the basis for consciousness.

The bases upon which consciousness/ “meaning”/ knowledge/ awareness is built are the categories of physics, the same categories that physicists symbolically represent with their equations.

Low-level consciousness/ knowledge on the part of low-level matter, of its currently-true situation, in terms of categories, relationships between the categories, and the numbers that apply to the categories, is the basis upon which the higher-level consciousness of living things can be constructed, via a process of collation and analysis.

But the higher and lower voltages underlying computers/ AIs, that can be symbolically represented as category-free zeros and ones, are not a basis upon which to build consciousness. The categories, relationships and numbers of consciousness can’t be constructed out of category-free zeroes and ones.

And this is the problem for the AI true believers:

Show how actual real-world information categories (like mass or position), with their associated relationships and numbers, can be constructed out of category-free zeroes and ones, zeroes and ones which (e.g.) might have been arranged to symbolically represent categories, relationships and numbers.
Show that this “extra-curricular” activity (i.e. this construction of actual real-world information categories, relationships and numbers) is going on inside computers, as well as the normal voltage/ transistor/ circuitry activities to be expected of a computer/ AI.