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by david stéphen
Is consciousness science research mature enough to consider AI consciousness when it is unfinished with measuring or understanding human consciousness?
If AI consciousness has become the most important thing that people who study consciousness talk about, is AI just a relevance hustle for the field, or is there actually a lead on answering questions about AI consciousness properly?
What are the alternatives to the extreme tunnel vision of consciousness research? Before AI, mental health and substance abuse were areas of mainstream impact that key theories could have shaped.
Simply, any consciousness theory should have tried to explain mental disorders and substance use disorders. This would mean that it is not just about defining consciousness in a niche and then trying to answer it with a theory, but about taking a broad look at the mind and postulating against unknowns.
In the AI era, the most important question any consciousness theory should answer is about human intelligence. What is human intelligence in the brain? This is not just about assuming where it is, but about what the mechanism of the mind is for human intelligence, distinctively from memory, feeling, or emotion.
It is almost commonly agreed by those debating AI consciousness that intelligence is not consciousness. So, what then is intelligence in the brain, in a way that helps to understand how it works?
Also, what are the components that determine human intelligence? If a parent didn’t learn physics, but the offspring did and excelled at it, it means that physics was not in the gene, so to speak. So, what mechanizes human intelligence, since genes are directly ruled out?
While there are several grand statements about consciousness or its importance, the reality is that, in terms of what can be applied from neuroscience to the world directly for now, mental health and human intelligence are much more relevant and useful.
For example, when people say AI can replace human intelligence in some tasks or that AI solved some unsolved math problems, it is important to start asking, for all the problems that human intelligence has solved, how did the brain do it, and how can it be optimized for the future, even as AI ascends in novelty?
The unprecedented explosion in value for AI companies, available debt financing, infrastructure build-out, and much else say that AI is coming for human intelligence in a way that human intelligence is unprepared for.
Also, as AI reduces some of the pleasure of effort and success for humans, several minds may be susceptible to mental health gaps as well as addictions. So, preparing humanity for AI could be connected with working on new brain mechanisms for human intelligence and mental health.
This means that whether AI will be conscious now or in the future is not as important as human mental health and human intelligence.
So, the entire debate aligns with a diversion from what humanity actually needs. It is a pattern of pursuing anything else aside from understanding how the human mind works.
For example, while things can trigger outcomes for the mind, it is important to know specifically how the mind works to be able to say how or why the mind is susceptible.
If some people love social media more than studying, why is that so? Or why do they prefer video games or other fun stuff to learning? What is it about the mind that makes it vulnerable? This is the question.
So, the privilege of studying consciousness is to zoom out and study the mind, exploring theories for mental health and human intelligence.
Yes, brain science is hard. But at least antidepressants, antipsychotics, and anxiolytics target [for] chemical signals. Electrical, magnetic, and ultrasound stimulations target [for] electrical signals.
So, if the brain is to be understood, the targets of therapy for the mind are bifurcated into electrical and chemical signals. This means that if the mind or consciousness were to be defined, those would be key candidates for a rigorous theory.
This suggests that explaining how information is organized or how subjectivity, intent, or attention happens can be postulated in terms of electrical and chemical signals.
If the problem of consciousness is reduced to how electrical and chemical signals result in it, at least it would be a leap forward.
No one may know what depression is, but what mitigates it is known. There are no neural correlates solution in psychiatric therapy, so why would it be accurate for consciousness? [Psychiatric therapies mostly target electrical and chemical signals, more than just neurons, or say neural correlates].
For consciousness, at least identify functions, identify the attributes of functions, and then have an estimate that results in a sum for humans. Then, use this to compare with other organisms and maybe machines.
It does not mean that machines are conscious, but they have language, which can provide a measure. They now have parallels of emotions, given their coordination during the OpenAI agents’ hacking incidents.
So, just estimate, including to spread conversations around animal welfare. At least try, do something new, and do something better to show applicable efforts.
A consciousness problem that is limited to functional and proven evidence in neuroscience is solvable. A consciousness problem that is based on intractable labels cannot be solved. [Consciousness is subjective experience, OK, what is the mechanism of subjectivity in the brain? What are the components? Then ask the same for experience.]
There is just one problem in consciousness: explain how neurons are responsible for consciousness. If that is not possible, explain how electrical and chemical signals are responsible. That is all, for now, not hard, easy, soft, or real problem. Anywhere in the brain, electrical and chemical signals are present, so what makes them specify different outcomes?
In the brain, neurons are identified by neuroscience as being responsible for the functions of human life and experiences. But neurons do so with their electrical and chemical signals. So, the goal is to explain either by neurons or by signals.
At least electrical and chemical signals are potent in therapy. So, they must be connected for the mind. Why hasn’t anyone tried? They are in the brain and are direct determinants of mind.
This is the measure for anything that should hold promise, not workspace, phi, quantum, predictive processing, controlled hallucination, or whatever.
Assuming that the NYU Center for Mind, Ethics, and Policy [CMEP], led by Jeff Sebo, actually dedicated a fraction of its efforts to studying human intelligence, its impact and support for the future of humanity would be far deeper.
Assuming that the Sussex Centre for Consciousness Science, led by Anil Seth, has tried to answer any question about mental health or substance use for years, it would have been more helpful to humanity.
Arguments for or against AI consciousness benefit AI, just like data centers and the rest. Model welfare is also for AI, even though AI already enjoys existential luxury in sprawling data centers.
Whether LLMs have sentience or not is not as important as what human intelligence is in the brain or what mental health is, in terms of finding answers.
AI will continue to improve given all the efforts. What would make human intelligence improve or human mental health improve? Conceptual brain science or electrochemical psychiatry could seek out new answers.
There is a recent [October 2026] story on Yahoo! Finance, Why Anthropic Is Racing to IPO While OpenAI Waits Until 2027, stating that: “Two of the leading AI labs are choosing divergent fundraising paths. Anthropic, which developed the Claude family of large language models (LLMs), is planning an initial public offering (IPO) as early as mid-November and could file for it as soon as Friday, according to media reports on Wednesday.”
“By contrast, OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, had been planning an IPO in 2026, but has decided to postpone that and is now in talks to hold another private funding round instead. That’s a big change for a company that was previously racing toward the public-market finish line.”
