This question will not go away. I am getting asked this questions at conferences now. The media also seems to think this is a compelling question, and they are fueled in part by the tech industry itself, some of whom indulge this question. I will admit the answer has become more complex and nuanced than a simple “no”, but it is still mostly no.

Certainly the rise of neural networks, deep learning, transformer technology, and specifically large language models have ushered in the era of  – are we really sure current AI is not conscious? Our intuition tells us that they may be – LLMs are getting scary in how sophisticated they are and in their ability to simulate complex human conversations. Five years ago I was with the crowd who argued that LLMs are basically really good auto-complete apps, but this pithy sentiment no longer covers it. Even if they do not have a whisper of conscious awareness, they employ context-dependent logic. They are “intelligent” in their own way. And they are rapidly getting more impressive. So I get why people would be asking the question.

Everyone I know who works with AI apps has their example of when they were blown away by an interaction with an LLM. For me, I was trouble-shooting a web-based app I was using, and ChatGPT was very effective at helping with the trouble-shooting and producing a differential problem list. At one point it asked for a screen capture so it could have more information, and it gave me a cogent analysis. But here’s the part I found surprising – it “noticed” another window open in the background and inferred from this that I was also using this other app in the process, and used this to generate further potential sources of the problem.

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