AI Consciousness - Joy of Autism - Clacking Wings

[Breedlove, S]

https://www.thetransmitter.org/artificial-intelligence/the-illusion-of-ai-consciousness-lessons-from-human-unconscious-processing/

The illusion of AI consciousness: Lessons from human unconscious processing

By Vanessa Hadid, Karim Jerbi, John W. Krakauer

Late at night, in neighboring apartments, two people sit alone in front of glowing screens. A university student types into an artificial-intelligence (AI) companion he has started confiding in: “I feel like nobody really understands me.” Next door, a young professional opens a chatbot she has begun to rely on most evenings: “I tried following your advice today, but I still couldn’t finish everything I was supposed to do.” The responses appear instantly: reassuring, thoughtful, even caring. Over time, both people begin to feel these conversations are deeply genuine, as though something on the other side truly understands them. Yet nothing in these systems experiences loneliness, empathy, stress or care. They generate responses from statistical patterns learned across vast amounts of language data.

As neuroscientists, we find this reaction unsurprising but concerning. It reveals something important not about machines, but about us. Humans are quick to infer the presence of a mind when behavior looks right. When language is fluent and emotionally attuned, we take it as evidence of inner experience. That intuition feels natural, but it is misleading. Today’s AI systems can sound perceptive and empathetic, yet there is no evidence that these systems are actually experiencing anything.

As the use of AI companions and therapeutic tools spreads, this confusion carries real risks. The question is not whether AI is becoming conscious, but why it so easily seems that way. Here, we approach the AI consciousness debate through the lens of neuroscience. Research on nonconscious processing in the human brain shows that behavior that is complex, goal directed and even emotionally responsive can unfold without awareness. This reminds us that behavior and experience can come apart, and that we should resist treating AI’s fluent and seemingly empathetic performance as evidence of a mind.

© 2026 Simons Foundation

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https://aeon.co/essays/why-being-autistic-can-be-a-lot-of-fun

The joy of autism

Sarah Hendrickx

Being autistic can be a lot of fun. I say that as an adult-diagnosed autistic (and ADHD) adult who has spent the past 20 years working in the autism world, meeting thousands of autistic people and their families, writing books, and speaking publicly on the subject. It’s not always fun, that’s for sure, but given that the nature of being human comes with a whole plethora of complexities and contradictions, light and dark, it is, of course, highly possible that a package of atypical cognitive processes, perceptions and behaviours clinically categorised as dysfunctional and disabling can also bring a whole load of satisfaction and pleasure. Even so, I imagine that, for some people, the concept of being autistic as being joyful is a tough one to square, given that the diagnostic criteria for autism spectrum disorder defines it as ‘characterised by varying but often marked and persistent deficits in social communication and social interaction’.

Still not convinced? Let’s think of being autistic in the same way that we think of a socially driven person who may thrive and excel in a busy environment, and then struggle when alone, or of a highly moral person who may be jubilant when justice prevails, and then devastated when it does not – in other words, one natural tendency can bring us both challenges and elation, depending on the circumstances. The same is true for autistic characteristics.

I should note that the following celebration of autistic delight does not negate or trivialise the very real and often disabling experience of living as an autistic person in a non-autistic world. I also recognise my own privilege as an autistic adult who is able to live relatively independently and with agency, but also as an autistic adult who – despite appearances – received my own diagnosis of autism by fair means, complete with the requisite impairments and deficits.

© Aeon Media Group Ltd. 2012-2026. 
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https://www.sciencenews.org/article/nightjar-birds-crack-wings-together

These birds clack their wing bones together to woo mates at night

By Jake Buehler

A series of sharp cracks splits the nighttime air in a forest in the Andean foothills. But this isn’t the sound of boots snapping twigs underfoot. It’s a bird.

Male scissor-tailed nightjars (Hydropsalis torquata) create these abrupt sounds by hitting the bones in their wings together in a forceful snap, researchers report in the May Journal of Avian Biology. 

Nightjars are largely nocturnal, insect-eating birds related to hummingbirds and swifts. H. torquata males are unusual for their exceptionally long, paired tail feathers. These males were already known to make explosive cracking noises at night as a mating signal to any nearby females. But little was understood about how they were doing it, says Juan Ignacio Areta, an evolutionary naturalist at Instituto de Bio y Geociencias del Noroeste Argentino in Salta, Argentina.

“Many nocturnal animals are well known for being extremely silent, such as the ‘silent’ flight of owls,” Areta says. “We wanted to learn how it was possible for a nocturnal animal to make these loud sounds.”

In late 2022, Areta and Christopher Clark — a behavioral ecologist at the University of California, Riverside — covertly filmed the male birds at night along a forest road near Salta. They used high-speed infrared cameras and then compared the footage to the sounds they were recording. 

Often, the nightjars would hop off the ground and swing their wings together behind their backs, creating a loud clack upon impact. Sometimes the males did this while flying or while mating with a female. The birds weren’t just hitting their feathers together. It was clear to the researchers that the snaps came from the wrist bones colliding just below the last bend in the wing. Areta and Clark think the bones vibrating from the forceful collision create the abrupt snapping sound.

© Society for Science & the Public 2000–2026.
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