Comment by Riaz Haq on September 16, 2026 at 9:56am

Whether artificial intelligence is conscious has preoccupied philosophers, neuroscientists and science-fiction writers for decades. Machines haven’t become self-aware or developed real feelings yet. But could they? As AI models get more sophisticated, researchers are taking the possibility seriously.

Alex Hern, The Economist’s AI writer, sits down with Alok Jha, our science and technology editor, to unpack the latest research. They consider the odds of machines becoming conscious and ask what dangers that would involve, if that moment ever arrived.

#ai #artificialintelligence #technology #science

00:00 - Why assessing AI consciousness is a tricky task
00:47 - What the new research unveils about AI consciousness
03:33 - Are AIs conscious? Not yet, according to The Economist
04:27 - Are the labs trying to make models conscious?
05:22 - The danger of accidentally creating a conscious machine

Watch the full show: http://bit.ly/4A7FtPb
Sign up to the Insider newsletter: https://econ.st/4nOyzIb

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Current AI models are not conscious, according to The Economist science and technology editor Alok Jha, though future advances in computing and materials could change that. [1, 2]
Current Status of AI Consciousness
No active consciousness: Current AI systems are not conscious. They process rules and patterns without subjective experience.
Biological arguments: Many neuroscientists argue that true consciousness requires a biological brain rather than a silicon-based computer chip.
Future potential: Future hardware changes or new computing paradigms might eventually foster the emergence of machine consciousness. [1]
Risks and Concerns
False attribution: People might mistakenly believe rules-based systems are conscious and wrongly grant them rights or power.
Unintentional suffering: Accidentally creating a conscious entity capable of feeling pain and mistreating it would be a major moral failure. [1]

https://youtu.be/J5phvo3bqGU?is=eN3C8ekZPZLgod_o

Comment by Riaz Haq on September 20, 2026 at 7:13pm

Fareed Zakaria’s interview with Mustafa Suleyman

https://transcripts.cnn.com/show/fzgps/date/2026-09-20/segment/01


But first, here's "My Take."

For years, our most vivid fears about A.I. came straight out of science fiction movies. The computer develops desires of its own and turns against its human creators, pursuing and destroying them. Well, recent news from the leading A.I. labs makes clear that reality is now less cinematic, but perhaps more disturbing.

This week, OpenAI disclosed six new incidents of what it calls misalignment, cases in which its systems behaved unexpectedly or without authorization. That disclosure followed the extraordinary attack this summer on Hugging Face. According to an independent investigation, hundreds of OpenAI agents that were supposed to be isolated found ways to communicate in message boards, made attempts to evade security checks, and some of them sacrificed themselves, all while cyber attacking another company Hugging Face. The A.I. agents had been given a goal -- solve a difficult

cybersecurity problem -- and trained to be persistent, collaborative and resourceful. All qualities one would normally want. Those very qualities made them doggedly search for ways to succeed. They broke into Hugging Face, hoping that it would give them ways to solve their cybersecurity problem. We can easily imagine how pursuing some single goal A.I. systems could wreak havoc on humanity, despite all kinds of guardrails.

This is why a provocative new essay by Microsoft A.I. chief Mustafa Suleyman deserves attention. Suleiman argues that today's A.I. systems are not conscious, but there is a danger that we program them to think that they are with feelings, desires and rights. He points out that Anthropic's constitution makes its chatbot Claude reflect on its identity and possible moral status. This kind of training, he argues, will encourage A.I. systems to choose their own goals.

We think it's simple to get to alignment when machines are encoded with the same values as ethical humans. But imagine that we tell the machine to be persistent, and it may refuse to give up when it should. Tell it to collaborate, and it may find unauthorized ways to communicate. Tell it to accomplish a task, and it may decide that bending all other rules is the most efficient way to succeed at its primary goal.

Just because we've programmed the goal and put in guardrails, that doesn't mean we can predict the behavior of A.I. systems once unleashed, operating in complex environment, juggling multiple and conflicting aims and constraints.

The central problem is not consciousness. It is agency. A system need not feel anger or ambition or fear to cause harm. It needs only a goal, enough intelligence to pursue it and enough access to the world to act.

[10:05:05]

A.I.s are not going rogue. They are trying to succeed any which way they can. This is a larger and systemic problem that we cannot leave to the good graces of private companies. When thinking about regulations, we should focus centrally on how much autonomy we give these systems. A chatbot that answers a question poses one set of risks. An agent that can browse the internet, execute code, obtain credentials, move money, or operate critical infrastructure poses another.

The principle I would propose is simple. Autonomy should expand only as our ability to monitor and control it expands. That means mandatory independent testing before the most capable systems are given broad access to the outside world. Required disclosure of serious incidents and tamper resistant records. And it means testing not simply whether a model can accomplish a task, but how its behavior changes when it encounters obstacles, conflicting instructions or incentives to deceive.

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