François Chollet: Creating artificial consciousness should not be a goal of AI research
fchollet · x · 2026-10-04
Chollet: Don't try to build artificial consciousness
Keras creator François Chollet argues AI research should not aim to create artificial consciousness — understanding it is fine, synthesizing it is not.
He rejects the argument that "AI models are computation, and consciousness arises from computation, so models are likely conscious" as meaningless — like saying "living things are made of atoms, and rocks are made of atoms, so rocks may be alive." Everything is computation (chess engines, AlphaGo, the Linux kernel), so computation alone tells us nothing about consciousness.
Related event: Chollet Rejects Claims That Current AI Models Are Conscious(4 posts)→
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