Public Intuitions about AI Consciousness

Part of the 2026-2027 webinar series "Identity in the Age of AI" of the Initiative for Responsible AI in Medicine and the Mental Health, Bioethics and Policy Lab, Tel Aviv University. Online, 18:15 Tel Aviv time (16:15 London · 11:15 New York). The Zoom link is sent to registrants.

Speaker: Prof. Clara Colombatto, University of Waterloo.

The rapid spread of Large Language Models (LLMs) with their human-like linguistic capabilities has accelerated scientific debates about the possibility of AI consciousness. Alongside efforts to develop descriptive and normative accounts of AI consciousness, the growing integration of AI into society also calls for a better understanding of public intuitions about AI minds, particularly amid concerns that anthropomorphism may foster excessive trust in AI. Across multiple surveys of representative samples from the US population, we find that a majority of the public attributes some possibility of phenomenal consciousness to LLMs. These attributions are stable…