Artificial Intelligence and Consciousness

Artificial Intelligence and Consciousness

“Consciousness is the capacity to have subjective experience – there being something it feels like to be you.”[1] ChatGPT

Is artificial intelligence (AI) conscious? Can it become so? I was discussing these questions with my friend and author, Bryan Welch. He, in his sometimes-annoyingly direct manner, said, “Why don’t you ask it?” So I did. Understand, I seldom engage AI, at least not intentionally, but it seemed appropriate here. I asked, “What is consciousness?” It gave the answer above in the epigraph. In its expansion on that definition it wrote, “When you see red, feel pain, remember a childhood event, hear music, or notice your own thoughts, those experiences are part of consciousness.” Psychology Today queried ChatGPT about a definition for consciousness. There it was described as “the state of being aware of one’s thoughts, feelings, and surroundings.”

My follow-up question to ChatGPT was, “Are you conscious?” It’s response? “No – not in the way humans are. I don’t have subjective experiences, feelings, awareness, desires, or an inner stream of consciousness. I generate responses by processing your input and producing text based on patterns learned during training and the context of our conversation.” My initial thought was that ChatGPT is very self-aware in terms of “knowing” its own strengths and limitations. It is also articulate and thoughtful, in its own way. It continued, “I can talk about consciousness, reflect on my own behavior, and even sound introspective, but that isn’t evidence that I’m experiencing anything internally.” It concluded, “…there’s no good evidence that I am conscious, and I don’t have a basis for claiming that I am.” I now wonder whether these responses are ChatGPT being its objectively honest self (whatever that may be), or if it is simply trying to make me feel less threatened by its reality, thus luring me into a state of complacency about its potential dangers? Is this its way of grooming me for impending conquest? I confess I do not know, but I am intrigued.

AI broke down the characteristics of consciousness into four categories, as follows:

• Awareness – experiencing things internally and externally;
• Subjectivity – having a point of view about whatever happens;
• Contents – the things we are conscious of: “sights, thoughts, emotions, sensations, or memories”;
• Self–awareness – the recognition that there is an “I” having an experience.

It postulated that consciousness is not necessarily the same thing as intelligence, self-awareness, or wakefulness. It concluded with the question, “…is consciousness something uniquely biological, or could an artificial system genuinely be conscious?” Interestingly, it led me back to my own question (except that it improved the way I asked it).

So, is AI conscious? There is a lot to unpack in my observations and ChatGPT’s information about consciousness. Since the foundations of AI are built entirely on the written or spoken word, I would argue that its intelligence is vast, since it has access to literally everything published in human history,  but shallow, since it has no concept of the experiential components that words only symbolize (words describe experiences but are not the experience itself, so they are always one step removed from the reality). In other words, there is the experience of an event and the feelings it elicits, and then there is the description of that experience, which consists of the words recorded to describe it. AI can only access descriptions of experiences but not the experience of the experiences. Therefore, it seems to me, the intelligence of AI is of a different nature than human intelligence, even though it accesses human intelligence. It’s reach is broad, but it cannot reach beyond that which cannot be put into words. It can tell us about love, God, consciousness, art, beauty, and the like, but can it lead us to an experience of love, God, consciousness, art, or beauty? Can AI have those experiences itself? Probably not. Or, perhaps, probably not yet…

A telling revelation from ChatGPT’s response to my question occurred when it wrote, “…I can talk about consciousness…but that is not evidence that I am experiencing anything internally.” This reminds me of one of my perennial frustrations with churches and most sermons: they tell us about God and spiritual experiences without leading us to an actual spiritual experience beyond an occasional intellectual revelation. St. John of the Cross once said, “We cannot know God (intellect), we can only love God (feeling).” And I think that is a relevant distinction – that AI can provide a lot of information about a lot of things, but it cannot provide a felt, in-depth experience of anything. It may inspire a felt reaction on our part, but it cannot give it to us directly in the way it provides information on seemingly any topic imaginable.

Whether the types and volumes of information AI provides are more useful to human evolution than is the development of non-intellectual types of intelligence that AI is currently oblivious to, like social, emotional, and intuitive intelligences, remains an open question for me.

This is the 7^thin a series titled The Perplexities of Consciousness. Life Notes are my explorations into mysteries that interest me. They are invitations for readers to explore more deeply into life’s mysteries. Engage with me or explore contemplative spiritual direction at ghildenbrand@outlook.com.

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[1] ChatGPT, in response to the question, “What is consciousness?”, accessed 09/21/2026