AI Systems Aren't P-Zombies, and the Term Mismatch Matters
rgblong · x · 2026-10-06
AI welfare researcher Robert Long argues in a Substack post that calling AI systems "p-zombies" misuses the term's original philosophical meaning.
- In philosophy of mind, a p-zombie is an atom-for-atom physical duplicate of a human that is also behaviorally indistinguishable from one.
- AI systems are neither atom-for-atom duplicates nor behaviorally indistinguishable from humans, so they cannot be p-zombies in that sense.
Long notes the point isn't whether people follow analytic philosophers' usage, but that the mismatch can trip up anyone trying to connect AI consciousness debates to the philosophical literature. In a reply he adds that loosely using "zombie" for conscious-seeming LLMs is fine, but relating that loose notion to a philosophical argument built on the strict one will go badly.
Related event: AI Systems Are Not Philosophical Zombies, Researcher Argues(2 posts)→
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