New essay: consciousness is a journey living systems do, and AI cannot
AnnaCiaunica · x · 2026-10-13
Researcher Anna Ciaunica publishes a new essay in The Montréal Review asking why humans have consciousness but AI cannot.
Her core claim: consciousness is not a "thing in the head" but a journey — something living systems actively do, step by step. Like climbing a mountain, every bodily and cellular stage matters; no single step is more fundamental than the rest.
From this she argues that AI, lacking an embodied living trajectory, cannot be conscious — a philosophical counterpoint to ongoing debates about machine consciousness.
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