Study finds people attribute less consciousness to AI than to humans with similar behavior

Researchers from Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in Germany conducted a study to explore how people perceive the consciousness of human and artificial characters. Across five experiments involving 1,092 British volunteers, participants rated AI systems lower in consciousness than humans described as performing the same actions.

When asked about environmental awareness—a term coined by the authors to describe perception—the gap between humans and machines narrowed, though human characters still received higher ratings at the highest levels of responsiveness.

Philosopher Ophelia Deroy, one of the study’s authors, cautions that limited vocabulary can lead to conceptual confusion. “We may use mental terms to describe AI, but this could simply be because we lack better words,” she said in a university statement.

The impact of language choice

The study did not measure machines’ internal experiences or test whether AI can feel. Instead, it analyzed participants’ interpretations of written scenarios, meaning the results reflect human judgments rather than inherent properties of artificial systems.

This approach differs from other research that seeks direct scientific evidence of consciousness in algorithms or relies on self-reports generated by AI models—responses that do not, in themselves, prove the existence of subjective experience.

Bahador Bahrami, a co-author of the study, emphasizes that how technology is presented to the public matters. “This makes our choice of language crucial,” he said.

Frequently Asked Questions

• Did the study prove that AI has no consciousness? No. The research assessed human judgments and did not test whether machines have subjective experiences.
• Did participants interact with an AI? No. The experiments used written descriptions of scenarios featuring human or artificial characters.
• Who participated in the research? 1,092 volunteers from the United Kingdom took part across five experiments.
• What was the effect of language on responses? The difference between humans and machines was greater when assessing consciousness and smaller when assessing environmental perception.