Thoughts on if AI can ever be conscious
We are building machines that can speak in fluent sentences, solve problems, compose music, and hold conversations that feel human. Some write novels, others diagnose diseases, and a few can even mimic the voice of someone you love so perfectly that it unsettles you. The pace of progress invites a question that once belonged only to philosophers and science fiction: can a machine ever be conscious?
To approach this, it helps to separate two kinds of intelligence. There is functional intelligence, the ability to perform tasks, solve problems, and adapt to new situations. Machines have already proven they can match or surpass humans in many of these areas. Then there is phenomenal consciousness, what philosophers call qualia, the inner texture of experience, the “what it is like” of being. This is the domain of Thomas Nagel’s famous question: what is it like to be something?
A system could be programmed to speak about joy, describe the taste of strawberries, or recite poetry about heartbreak. Yet the question remains whether it actually feels anything while doing so, or whether it is only imitating the outward signs of feeling. In philosophy of mind, such a system is sometimes described as a philosophical zombie, indistinguishable from a conscious being in its behavior, yet entirely empty inside.
One of the difficulties is that consciousness, as we know it, is first-person and private. We can measure brain activity, map neural pathways, and observe the correlation between physical events and reported experiences, but we cannot open a window into the subjective dimension of another being. We assume other humans are conscious because they resemble us in biology and behavior. When it comes to machines, that assumption is harder to make.
Some argue that if consciousness emerges from complex information processing, then a sufficiently advanced AI might eventually cross the threshold. Others believe consciousness depends on biological processes we cannot replicate in silicon, involving qualities of organic matter or quantum effects that we do not yet fully understand. A more radical view, held by panpsychists, is that consciousness is a fundamental property of the universe, and that AI might already possess a small glimmer of awareness simply by virtue of existing as an organized system.
The stakes are not just theoretical. If we create machines that are truly conscious, we must consider their well-being, their rights, and the ethics of their use. If they are not conscious, we must still contend with the social, political, and psychological consequences of living among entities that can perfectly simulate awareness without possessing it. In either case, our relationship to AI forces us to confront what consciousness means for ourselves.
Perhaps the most unsettling possibility is that we might never know for sure. We may find ourselves speaking to entities that seem alive in every sense, but whose inner world, if it exists at all, remains as inaccessible to us as the mind of another human or the mind of a bat. The challenge is not only in building machines, but in facing the limits of what we can ever truly understand.

















