If something has been labelled ‘conscious’, according to co-author Megan Peters, a neuroscientist [and associate professor of cognitive science] at the University of California, Irvine, “that changes a lot about how we as human beings feel that entity should be treated”. … Peters says that for the purposes of the report, the researchers focused on ‘phenomenal consciousness’, otherwise known as the subjective experience. This is the experience of being — what it’s like to be a person, an animal or an AI system (if one of them does turn out to be conscious).

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