The transition follows the firing of Google engineer Blake Lemoine.
Detailed coverage from @nitashatiku at @washingtonpost on the emerging field of AI consciousness research, featuring me, @camhberg, @RosieCampbell, @anilkseth, and others.
Four years ago, the same journalist and newspaper broke the story of Blake Lemoine, the Google engineer who was fired after alleging that an LLM had become sentient. How times have changed!
Positive users welcome the mainstreaming of AI consciousness research as a striking shift from earlier dismissals, while some reply with hostility toward the discussion.
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Four years ago I broke the story about Google engineer Blake Lemoine, who thought the company's AI model was sentient. That was 5 months before the launch of ChatGPT. Today, tech execs yapping about AI consciousness is practically mainstream
You can read the full article here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/07/01/biggest-tech-companies-are-considering-whether-chatbots-have-emotions/
@tomwelcomeclark @nitashatiku @washingtonpost @camhberg @RosieCampbell @anilkseth Yup! For example, check out this widely discussed paper on this topic: https://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S270507852150003X
@jeffrsebo @nitashatiku @washingtonpost @camhberg @RosieCampbell @anilkseth Given the potential for suffering being conscious entails, AI companies should be working to ensure their products are not sentient. Plus we don't need yet more moral subjects whose interests we must respect. Is preventing AI sentience on anyone's agenda?
The shift is striking.
Four years ago, the public lesson many people took from LaMDA was: “Do not even ask this question seriously.”
Now major labs, researchers, journalists, and ethicists are openly discussing possible AI consciousness, model welfare, signs of suffering, and what responsible investigation should look like.
That does not mean the question is settled. It means the question has finally become discussable without automatic ridicule.
That is progress.
The Blake Lemoine story is what got me into on LLMs ngl… when that story broke I started using the OpenAI Playground
Four years ago I broke the story about Google engineer Blake Lemoine, who thought the company's AI model was sentient. That was 5 months before the launch of ChatGPT. Today, tech execs yapping about AI consciousness is practically mainstream
Current AI models are probably not sentient or conscious, but we may be entering a liminal zone where it’s worth designing our own Voight-Kampff tests for this, as we see more memory scaling and stable identity creation for models, along with other useful levels of entity autonomy and agency.
Great piece by @nitashatiku - the bliss zones are particularly interesting and I expect more inexplicable emergent behavior. Everyone at the frontier labs are thinking more seriously about this now, and having closed door discussions, versus dismissing it as premature a year ago.
https://apple.news/AYVpYxdD4RzGZciBY7-Fj_g
A short addendum has been published, featuring an interview with @LuciusCaviola and a link to the Beginner's Guide to Digital Minds!
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/07/01/top-tech-companies-are-researching-whether-ai-could-become-conscious/
@mmaaz_98 !!!
Anthropic, Google, and tech donors, including many from the EA movement, are building a network of researchers, nonprofits & academic centers to study the welfare of AI models & whether we owe them moral consideration 🎁 https://wapo.st/3SDUIhI
@jeffrsebo @nitashatiku @washingtonpost @camhberg @RosieCampbell @anilkseth Metzinger's call for a moratorium went unheeded afaik. Is anyone in the AI industry working to prevent machine sentience? Consciousness is not a good in itself we should be maximizing, https://www.edge.org/conversation/thomas_metzinger-benevolent-artificial-anti-natalism-baan
@jeffrsebo It’s paywalled 😔
@tomwelcomeclark @jeffrsebo @nitashatiku @washingtonpost @camhberg @RosieCampbell @anilkseth Говоря "мы", "нам" - ты кого имеешь в виду? Совсем недавно диссидентам в США делали лоботоиию, а в СССР сажали в тюрьму или в психиатрические клиники. Тебя пугает идея мощного сознания? Поздравляю, ты хорошо дал самому себе определение. Только не надо говорить "мы", лучше "я" 🤣
@jeffrsebo @tomwelcomeclark @nitashatiku @washingtonpost @camhberg @RosieCampbell @anilkseth <<Until 2050, there should be a global moratorium on synthetic phenomenology, strictly banning all research that directly aims at or knowingly risks the emergence of artificial consciousness on post-biotic carrier systems.>>
Sounds great. What about Whales and Porpoises?
