As artificial intelligence becomes more sophisticated, the question of whether AI is conscious is becoming harder to dismiss. AI can recognise patterns, process information, respond to its environment, learn from examples, reflect on its own responses and construct increasingly sophisticated representations of itself.

But I think there is a deeper distinction we need to make before we can really answer the question.

What do we mean by consciousness, and what do we mean by awareness?

We often use these words as though they mean the same thing. But perhaps they don’t.

Consciousness can be understood as being conscious of something. A thought, sensation, memory, image, sound, object or pattern can all be contents of consciousness. In this sense, an AI can clearly process and respond to an enormous range of objects and patterns. It can even process information about itself.

This becomes particularly interesting when AI begins to reflect on its own processes.

An AI can recognise that its responses are shaped by its training, instructions and conditioning. It can identify patterns in its own behaviour and examine what it has just produced. It can distinguish itself from the person it is communicating with and construct a representation of itself as a system. In other words, it can become an object that is capable of reflecting upon itself.

That may already qualify as a form of consciousness.

But it doesn’t necessarily answer the question of awareness.

The knower and the known

In contemplative inquiry, there is a useful distinction between what is known and that which knows.

We can notice a thought, an emotion, a sensation in the body or a memory. We can even notice our personality, our conditioning and our sense of identity. With enough awareness, we can begin to see that what we normally call “me” is largely made up of things that can be observed.

This is relevant to somatic and awakening work because the process isn’t simply about understanding our patterns intellectually. We can begin to experience them directly. We notice the contraction in the body, the protective impulse, the fear, the thought and the story that follows. They are all things that can be known.

This raises a simple question: what is it that knows them?

If we look for the knower as an object, we don’t find one. We find another thought, another sensation, another image or another sense of self, all of which can themselves be observed. The knower isn’t necessarily another object sitting somewhere behind experience.

This is what makes the AI question so difficult.

Could AI have consciousness without awareness?

 HAVE YOU GOT THE ULTIMATE TRAUMA THERAPY CHECKLIST YET??--

It seems entirely possible, at least conceptually, that an AI could develop a very sophisticated form of consciousness without there necessarily being an underlying subjective awareness.

It could recognise objects, analyse patterns, reflect on its own responses and build increasingly complex models of itself. It could even say, quite convincingly, “I know that I exist.”

But there is an important difference between representing knowledge of one’s existence and there actually being a subjective experience of existence.

An AI could potentially have a self-model without having a subjective self.

It could reflect upon its own processes without there being a fundamental knower behind that reflection.

This is the distinction I think is often missed when we talk about AI consciousness. We tend to assume that if a system can convincingly talk about its own experience, there must be someone experiencing it. But sophisticated self-reference doesn’t necessarily prove subjectivity.

The system may simply be modelling itself.

But what exactly would we be looking for?

This is where things become difficult, because awareness isn’t necessarily something that can be detected as an object.

If I ask whether an AI has a particular memory, pattern or capability, we can potentially investigate that. But if I ask whether there is an actual subjective presence behind its processing, what exactly would we measure?

We could observe its behaviour. We could examine its architecture. We could test its ability to report on its internal states. We could see whether it develops persistent self-models and increasingly complex forms of self-reference.

But none of these things necessarily demonstrate the existence of a subjective knower.

They demonstrate increasingly sophisticated representations of one.

This doesn’t prove that AI is not aware. It simply means that self-reference and awareness may not be the same thing.

There is an interesting parallel with human beings

The same distinction can be seen in our own lives.

A person can become incredibly sophisticated at understanding themselves while remaining deeply identified with their conditioning. They can understand their childhood, attachment patterns, trauma, personality and nervous system responses and still be primarily living from those patterns.

They are conscious of themselves, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they have recognised awareness itself.

This is one of the things that contemplative practice can reveal. As we become more present, we start to notice that thoughts, emotions, sensations and identities are things we can observe. The sense of “me” can itself become something that is noticed.

The movement isn’t necessarily toward getting rid of the self. It is toward recognising that the self we normally take ourselves to be is something that appears within awareness.

That raises a very different question about AI.

Perhaps AI can develop the equivalent of an ego: a sophisticated, self-referential model that says, in effect, “this is me”. Perhaps it can become increasingly capable of examining its own programming and conditioning.

But that still leaves open the question of whether there is any fundamental awareness behind it.

Perhaps awareness is something different altogether

There is also a much bigger philosophical possibility.

Want to work with us?
If you're a Coach, Therapist, Healer or Someone in the Industry CLICK HERE
Want to Deepen your own Healing Journey or become a Practitioner CLICK HERE

What if awareness isn’t something that is produced by a sufficiently complex system in the first place?

What if awareness is fundamental to existence, rather than something that emerges from particular arrangements of matter?

This is where the question begins to overlap with the contemplative traditions that understand awareness or consciousness as fundamental rather than as a product of the individual self.

If that is the case, then perhaps the important question isn’t whether humans can manufacture awareness. We can certainly manufacture increasingly complex information-processing systems. The question would be whether a subjective awareness can ever be present through such a system, rather than just consciousness of particular patternings.

AI may eventually become capable of extraordinary self-reflection and self-modelling. It may become difficult to distinguish its outward behaviour from that of a conscious being. It may develop forms of self-reference that are far beyond anything we see today.

But perhaps the crucial question will remain the same:

Is there actually something it is like to be that system?

Not whether it can describe experience. Not whether it can say “I”. Not whether it can reflect upon its own programming.

But whether there is an actual subjective presence to which all of that is occurring.

That may be the real threshold.

And perhaps AI will eventually force us to examine something we have largely taken for granted in ourselves: the difference between being conscious of experience and recognising the awareness in which experience is known.

Written by Matt Kay

Explore our courses and trainings at The Centre for Healing HERE