Is AI Conscious?

[dwa...@advaita.org.uk]

For those who might be interested in the question of AI possibly being conscious (now or in the future), I had a ‘discussion’ in September with ChatGPT on the topic, the emphasis being on Advaita’s understanding of the term. I have just completed a 10-part posting of the transcript beginning at https://www.advaita-vision.org/ai-and-consciousness-2/. The early parts are more concerned with the scientific aspects. If you are only interested in the Advaita-related views, begin with part 9 - https://www.advaita-vision.org/ai-and-consciousness-part-9/. And if you just want the summary with my overall comments - https://www.advaita-vision.org/ai-and-consciousness-part-10/.

 

Dennis

[Chittaranjan Naik]

Namaste Sri Dennis-ji,

I have dealt with this topic in my first book 'Natural Realism and Contact Theory of Perception' in Chapter 2 in the section titled 'Refutation of Intentionalism'. 

I have argued, in that section, that both the strong AI hypothesis (as generally held by neuroscience) and the weak AI hypothesis (as held by John Searle, the philosopher who is famous for his Chinese Room Argument demonstrating that a machine can have no intelligence) are not sustainable. 

I have also taken up the arguments of the proponents of unconscious thinking, especially the argument of Tim Crane as laid out in his book 'The Mechanical Mind' and shown it to be fallacious. 

In short there is no such such thing as 'artificial intelligence' because intelligence is not a guna that can be attributed to a machine. In Nyaya terms, any definition of intelligence that permits intelligence to be attributed to a machine would amount to the (worst kind of) fault known as asambhava. 

For those who may be interested, I am attaching the extract from Chapter 2 of my book as an attachment to this post. While the entire section 'Refutation of intentionalism' is relevant to this discussion on AI, points (iii) to (vi) specifically deal with AI / intelligence in computing machines.

Warm regards,

Chittaranjan

[dwa...@advaita.org.uk]

Dear Chittaranjan-ji,

 

Thank you! Yes I have your book – I reviewed it at https://www.advaita-vision.org/natural-realism/. The problem is that my memory is somewhat unreliable these days! AI is very topical at present, and I have been using it quite a bit to help with sorting out computer problems (with varying degrees of success). So, having read a few articles in magazines and on-line. I thought it would be interesting to see how a LLM analyzed the problem in the context of Advaita.

 

I don’t think that there can be much argument about what we understand by ‘consciousness’ but rather more when we ask what is meant by ‘intelligence’. Anyway, you clearly have far more knowledge of the background to all this, so I will not attempt to embark upon any in depth discussion!

 

Best wishes,

Dennis

[Chittaranjan Naik]

Namaste Sri Dennis-ji,

Yes Dennis-ji, I am aware that you have my book and also that you have reviewed it both on your site as well as on Amazon. I am really grateful to you for putting up those reviews. 

The purpose of my post was to present to this list another, slightly different, route to explore the question whether AI has sentience. While you approach it from the angle of consciousness (and interestingly, by engaging the services of AI itself), I do so from the angle of intelligence. Of course, in the end the conclusions of both are the same. 

Warm regards,

Chittaranjan

[Akilesh Ayyar]

Perhaps the preliminary question ought to be: are humans conscious?

Akilesh Ayyar

On Thu, Nov 20, 2025 at 2:57 AM <dwa...@advaita.org.uk> wrote:

For those who might be interested in the question of AI possibly being conscious (now or in the future), I had a ‘discussion’ in September with ChatGPT on the topic, the emphasis being on Advaita’s understanding of the term. I have just completed a 10-part posting of the transcript beginning at https://www.advaita-vision.org/ai-and-consciousness-2/. The early parts are more concerned with the scientific aspects. If you are only interested in the Advaita-related views, begin with part 9 - https://www.advaita-vision.org/ai-and-consciousness-part-9/. And if you just want the summary with my overall comments - https://www.advaita-vision.org/ai-and-consciousness-part-10/.

 

Dennis

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[putran M]

Namaskaram,

Perhaps the preliminary question ought to be: are humans conscious?

I think humans are distinguished from machines due to the presence of the mind or subtle body. Consciousness reflects (so to speak) in the mind as the knowledge "I am" or "I see, do ... this". Due to the mind being the locus to this type of self-pointing knowledge, the human (Self identified with body-mind upadhi) is said to be "conscious", whereas the machine that lacks the subtle body in its manifestation and does not manifest the "I am" self-knowledge is not conscious.

thollmelukaalkizhu 

[Ram Chandran]

Namaskar:

I am a chess player and I have been playing from my childhood.   I have also noticed the development of chess playing algorithms using super computers.  The chess program known as Deep Blue was developed by IBM using two phd computer scientists who came out of Carnegie Mellon university of Cleveland, Ohio.  The world Champion at that time Gary Kasporov who was asked to play against the computer and he won.  I believe that this may be an example of a Chess program developed using every data and chess games available at that time (early times of AI).  Currently the computer system now million times better than what was available at that time and with trillions of trillion Bytes of storage!  Even then, the algorithm has to be developed by a human being which can be more enhanced by AI techniques.  It is not yet proved that an human can not beat a chess computer!!  Though I have been beaten by several computer chess program, but human brain power is unmeasurable.  Human consciousness is nothing but the "One and only one - the universal consciousness" which is the seed for the development of human brain or the computer brain derived through AI!  As long as we agree that the human beings and all living beings only have limited intelligence, we may have to agree that AI which is a derivation from human intelligence has need to be limited!  AI is also part of the "Vyavaharika space." Since I am a limited human beings, my vision and knowledge on the future of AI is also limited.  

With my warm regards,

Ram Chandran