François Chollet: 'AI is computation, so it may be conscious' is as empty as 'rocks are atoms, so they're alive'
AnnaCiaunica · x · 2026-10-05
François Chollet pushes back on the popular argument that "AI models are computation, and consciousness arises from computational substrates, so they're likely conscious."
He calls it as meaningless as claiming a rock might be alive because both rocks and living creatures are made of atoms. Everything is computation — chess engines, AlphaGo, the Linux kernel — and that alone confers nothing. A static input-output program lacking the properties associated with conscious beings (information integration, interoception, etc.) gains none of them by being computation.
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