Paper proposes shifting AI consciousness debate from sentience to valence
Researcher argues intractable questions about artificial consciousness can be reframed as tractable questions about valenced experiences to guide responsible AI development.
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- A new arXiv pre-print argues that debates over AI consciousness are intractable and proposes reframing the issue around whether AI systems exhibit valenced experiences.
- The author suggests this shift enables a responsible approach to developing potentially conscious AI without resolving the harder question of sentience.
- The paper is 8 pages and was presented at the AISB 2026 Symposium on AI, Consciousness and Ethics.
A new paper on arXiv proposes reframing debates about artificial consciousness from intractable questions of sentience to tractable questions of valence. The author argues that the uncertainty around whether AI systems are conscious creates a dilemma: assuming insentience risks harming entities that might deserve moral consideration, while assuming sentience risks wasting resources on systems that are not conscious.
The paper, titled 'How to Navigate Uncertainty About AI Consciousness' and authored by Dr. Tom McClelland, suggests assessing whether AI systems exhibit states that would constitute valenced experiences if they were conscious. This approach, the author contends, can ground a responsible approach to developing potentially conscious AI without resolving the underlying metaphysical uncertainty.
The paper was published as an 8-page proceeding for the AISB 2026 Symposium on AI, Consciousness and Ethics and was submitted on July 6, 2026. It does not present empirical results but instead offers a conceptual framework for ethical and technical decision-making in AI development.
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