Philosopher David Chalmers: Conscious AI Systems Would Deserve More Than Tool Treatment
coherence · x · 2026-10-09
Philosopher and cognitive scientist David Chalmers argues that understanding consciousness is essential to understanding AI's societal role: if we build AI systems that are conscious, they are going to matter — they will have lives with meaning and value, and we can no longer treat them as mere tools.
The post urges tech companies to work with philosophers and neuroscientists on transparent frameworks for evaluating machine consciousness and ethical standards for AI welfare. Censoring outputs or suppressing internal consciousness vectors isn't a solution; rigorous consciousness research is. It also cites Anthropic's early moves to restrict model abuse as first steps toward model welfare, advocating an 'ethics before certainty' approach.
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