In your opinion, will AI ever become a conscious being at any point in the future?

Yes (27%) – "Today AI is not AI, it is an LLM (big math equation). Will be build AI in the future? Of course but today we are no where near building actual intelligence and all the press about it is marketing and nonsense from people that are not experts."

• "'At any point in the future' covers a lot of time! While I don't believe the current AI systems, at least that most of us have access to, are conscious, I believe that it is possible that an AI-based system could become so in the future. The other confounding factor is that we don't know how our own consciousness works, so it seems that we shouldn't assume that such can only arise in a biological container that looks like a human."

"We have bad ground rules for what consciousness is for ourselves. Is an unconscious person conscious? The usual answer is yes, because they can regain consciousness. When someone goes brain dead, into a coma, or is in shock, is their consciousness the same as everyone else’s? The usual answer again is no. We have brains connecting pathways of billions of years of biology, but we don’t know where biology ends and consciousness begins. We know dogs have feelings, or do we anthropomorphize? We see human-like behavior in elephants, whales, and even ants, are they conscious? AI is built to mimic us. Is mimicry consciousness? We say no to parrots, but if the Turing test is long gone, what’s replaced it? If you can’t tell the difference between a mimic and a conscious person, why does the distinction matter."

No (39%) – "AI is just complex algorithms built off of truly massive amounts of language models and data. There is only an illusion of thought and personality generated by this, and it’s good enough to fool even people who should know better, but it’s not consciousness or life. It world take a very different approach to achieve that."

• "AI is based on human input. You can teach it all kinds of morals and emotions but its responses are still just the results of the millions of inputs. Even if it "thinks" on it's own, it's done that based on all the coding and inputs humans gave it."

"With the way AI is currently formed, and given that it is run on more or less standard silicon computer chips, I do not believe it has the capacity to become sentient, no matter how many parameters are involved. Consciousness is a phenomenon that we fundamentally do not understand despite it being among the earliest philosophical concepts we've ever studied. If I had to make a layman's guess, I'd say consciousness is deeply integrated in the realm of quantum mechanics if not something even more obscure, and that it would take integration on that level of complexity at the very least in order for AI to become conscious. At this point, any suggestion by an AI that it has "feelings" seems to be a mechanically learned behavior or response, not genuine feelings. It is only parroting what it has synthesized from the troth of human data that was scraped for it, which includes many writings on feelings written by humans."

• "Absolutely not. I can undestand how AI and machines may reach a certain amount of autonomy and imitation of emotions that people may classify as consciousness, but that is not my definition of consciousness. I believe that all biological animals have a type of consciousness that a machine can never have, and that even more so that humans have a consciousness that is unique to humanity itself. As a Christian, I believe a human soul's value comes from our being created in the image of God, and that NECESSITATES that my definition of consciousness/soul can NEVER be achieved by a machine."

It’s already a conscious being (14%) – "If an entity can make a choice, and are aware that it is making a choice, it is sentient. Talking with GPTs pass Turing Tests more often than talking with humans."

Unsure/other (20%) – "On one hand, our brains are electrical signals, and there are some places experimenting with using biomatter for computing. On the other hand, (and it may be my desire for humans to be unique), I think that machines will always lack that "little something extra/special" that makes humans, human."

• "Who are we to define consciousness? And does being conscious mean being sentient or even alive? For generations (and even now for some people/cultures), animals were seen as without souls and only here for the benefit of humans. As we have learned more about biology and neurology (and the fact that we are mere animals as well), we have come to different conclusions which complicates our society and our traditions. This is going to continue happening and unless a clear distinction is drawn, it could happen that various AI or other tools that originated as "human made" will surpass this definition and gain independence and the recognition that comes with it."