Are animals and AI conscious? We have developed new theories to test this

You might think that a honeybee foraging in your garden and a browser window running ChatGPT have nothing in common. But recent scientific research is seriously considering the possibility that one or both could be conscious.

There are many different ways to study consciousness. One of the most common methods is to measure how an animal – or artificial intelligence (AI) – behaves.

But two new papers on the possibility of consciousness in animals and AI propose new theories for how to test it – one that strikes a balance between sensationalism and knee-jerk skepticism about whether humans are the only conscious beings on Earth.

A heated debate

Questions surrounding consciousness have long sparked heated debates.

This is partly because conscious beings may have greater moral significance than unconscious things. Expanding the scope of consciousness means expanding our ethical horizons. Even if we can’t be sure that something is conscious, we can still be wrong about it…