Seth, Block, Tononi: AI consciousness unlikely in silicon

Three leading consciousness researchers argue in Nature that today's AI systems are not conscious, and that machine consciousness is 'extraordinarily unlikely, at least in the digital, silicon-based systems that underpin today's technologies' along current trajectories of development.

The essay, published 19 October 2026, is co-authored by Anil Seth of the University of Sussex, Ned Block of New York University, and Giulio Tononi of the University of Wisconsin–Madison. They offer three arguments. The first separates consciousness from intelligence: 'Consciousness is about being and feeling; intelligence… is all about doing, or performing functions,' they write. They point to the cerebellum, which holds nearly four-fifths of the brain's neurons yet runs 'precise, adaptive, highly intelligent motor computations entirely outside conscious awareness.'

The second rejects computational functionalism, the premise that any substrate running the right program suffices for experience. 'Brains are not… computers that are made of meat,' they write.

The third invokes integrated information theory, long associated with Tononi, which holds that consciousness depends on components being wired together in very specific, tightly interconnected ways absent from the layered, feed-forward structure of today's deep-learning systems.

Language is doing most of the illusion work, the authors argue. 'LLMs are mirrors that reflect an image of our collective digitized past,' they write; systems like AlphaFold feel less conscious to users not because they are any less sophisticated, but because they lack linguistic output. The piece also pushes back on the precautionary case now spreading through AI-welfare discussions, contending that 'false positives are much more likely to occur than false negatives.' Seven of the researchers we track posted the link.