Philosopher Schwitzgebel: if you have an opinion on AI consciousness, you're probably wrong
eschwitz · x · 2026-10-15
- UC Riverside philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel (author of AI and Consciousness: A Skeptical Overview) argues on the Empathy Unbound podcast (56 min, ep. 144) that society is heading toward a crisis over "debatable persons" — AI systems whose moral status serious scientists genuinely disagree about.
- He suggests today's AI is better understood as a mimic than a mind (monarch vs. viceroy butterfly analogy), and covers grief bots, digital uploading, personal identity, and how radical life extension could create a new axis of inequality.
- After 30 years studying consciousness, his takeaway: almost nobody knows how this resolves, and that uncertainty deserves to be taken seriously rather than argued away.
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