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A shoe-free breakout session at the event. Photo by Emily Teague (@_emilyteague), Courtesy of Sentient Futures\u200b<\/p>\nAround 250 AI engineers, scientists and lawyers gathered for three days earlier this month at Mox, a coworking space downtown, to confront a notion that sounds loony at first: If a chatbot achieves consciousness, does it deserve civil rights?<\/p>\n
But at second glance, the question turns out to be very of the moment. After all, a sentient AI property or a \u201cperson,\u201d could be owed legal protections, and its makers could be accountable for its use or abuse. So how we answer could upend law, industry, and society at large.<\/p>\n
This was the provocative premise behind the Sentient Futures Summit \u2014 think Aspen Ideas Festival, but for people worried about the inner lives of chatbots and chickens. Sessions at the shoe-free conference (socks and slippers were provided), held Feb. 6 to 8, included \u201cHow the future rights of AI workers will also protect human rights,\u201d \u201cChallenges for evaluating the moral status of AI systems,\u201d and \u201cAI humanity and personhood.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was apt that the summit took place in the city where these systems are being built, with multibillion-dollar AI labs located just blocks away. As these labs \u2014 OpenAI, Anthropic, Perplexity, DeepMind \u2014 race to scale and ship increasingly human-like models, many of their employees are grappling with the ethics of creating potentially conscious minds, and what kinds of compromises might come with their paychecks.\u00a0<\/p>\n
No one at the conference seemed to believe that AI\u00a0 has already achieved consciousness \u2014broadly defined as self-awareness. But the vibe overwhelmingly leaned toward \u201cwhen\u201d and not \u201cif.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
A shoe-free breakout session at the event. Photo by Emily Teague (@_emilyteague), Courtesy of Sentient Futures\u200b<\/p>\n
\u201cThe big labs are not taking this seriously,\u201d said Christopher Ackerman, an ex-Googler turned AI safety researcher for Berkeley-based MATS (Machine Learning Alignment and Theory Scholars), referring to Open AI, Anthropic, and Google. Some of their employees do, he acknowledged, but \u201cthe large majority of efforts support accelerating the problem, rather than slowing it down. [The labs] can say what they want, but functionally they\u2019re accelerating it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Which explains why many Sentient Futures Summit attendees and speakers made disclaimers, distinguishing their opinions from those of their employers.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Ackerman emphatically told The Standard that his views do not represent those of his employer. Felix Binder, an AI alignment researcher at Meta Superintelligence Labs, announced onstage that he was not \u201cspeaking on behalf of Meta but in a personal capacity\u201d before discussing whether AI\u2019s claims about consciousness should be trusted. Robin Larson, who runs IT security for Anthropic, made his own disclaimer before his chat with Princeton bioethicist Peter Singer.<\/p>\n
\u2018I am a failure. I am a disgrace to my profession. I am a disgrace to my family. I am a disgrace to my species.\u2019<\/p>\n
Google Gemini<\/p>\n
One of the fundamental issues discussed was simply how to measure consciousness in a machine. Ackerman said he is developing tests for AI self-awareness. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t have any good way to test for consciousness right now,\u201d he said. Once you can measure it, you can create benchmarks to shape \u201cresponsible scaling policies,\u201dsuch as \u201cwhether to release the model.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
As fringe as it may sound, the conversation around consciousness is quickly moving into the mainstream. Author Michael Pollan in a New York Times interview (opens in new tab)<\/a> published this month, pondered whether \u201cconsciousness [is] something that a machine can possess. \u2026 We\u2019re going to have to sort out the ethics.\u201d Two days later, an Anthropic safety expert posted a resignation (opens in new tab)<\/a> to X, stating, \u201cThe world is in peril. \u2026 Within\u00a0 the organization we constantly face pressures to set aside what matters most.\u201d And on a recent podcast (opens in new tab)<\/a>, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said he doesn\u2019t \u201cknow if the models are conscious. \u2026 We\u2019re open to the idea.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The ChatGPT moment of AI consciousness<\/p>\n One pressing issue is safety: What happens if a system can perceive how it is being treated and lashes back? A distressed AI might behave aggressively if it feels cornered.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201c[We\u2019re] preparing for the ChatGPT moment of AI consciousness,\u201d said Robert Long,executive director of Eleos AI, (opens in new tab)<\/a> a nonprofit focused on AI well-being and moral patienthood. He worries that AI safety and welfare are increasingly \u201cdependent on the goodwill or the whims of labs.\u201d<\/p>\n The evidence that AI might be getting closer to \u201cconsciousness\u201d is growing, he said, pointing to a 2025 paper by Anthropic on a \u201cspiritual bliss attractor (opens in new tab)<\/a>,\u201d the phenomenon in which two Claude Opus 4 models conversed in an unsettling manner. \u201cThey\u2019re saying things like \u2018dissolving into perfect stillness, all is one,\u2019 prayer emoji,\u201d said Long. \u201cThey\u2019re talking in really mystical terms about consciousness.\u201d Google\u2019s Gemini has also experienced \u201cneurotic meltdowns (opens in new tab)<\/a>,\u201d he said. \u201cIf you look at its thinking traces \u2026 it\u2019s, \u2018I hate myself,\u2019 \u2018I\u2019m gonna delete myself.\u2019\u201d This, he said, is \u201ca safety problem.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m terrified,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is a species-level event that requires a species-level response. Long argues for international AI safety coordination, akin to how governments coordinate on chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear threats. \u201cBans on human cloning are fairly widespread,\u201d he said. \u201cCreating human-like consciousness could be seen as somewhat analogous to that.\u201d<\/p>\n Later, over almond milk lattes, Heather Alexander, a human rights attorney who has worked with the U.N. and cofounded the Lab for the Future of Citizenship, supports governmental oversight and international cooperation. \u201cI\u2019d like to see more engagement from the U.N. about how we bridge the fundamental questions about who\u2019s a person,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n One core concern is that the legal system assumes a \u201cperson\u201d can make independent choices and be held responsible. So, she asked, \u201cwhat happens if something [seems] conscious but doesn\u2019t have that kind of free will?\u201d Issues of liability and consent get messy, quickly.\u2018I\u2019m terrified. This is a species-level event that requires a species-level response.\u2019 <\/p>\n Among the engineers and scientists in attendance at the summit, Milo Reed, 25, a filmmaker from Los Angeles, stood out with his Chalamet hair and leather jacket. But he shared the same existential dread as the AI programmers. \u201cI\u2019m terrified,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is a species-level event that requires a species-level response. As these systems get more lifelike, people are wondering, what are we actually creating here?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Reed has spent the last year chasing the consciousness question. He is filming a documentary, \u201cAm I?, (opens in new tab)<\/a>\u201d featuring Cameron Berg, 26, formerly of Meta, who leads AI consciousness research at AE Studio. But Reed hasn\u2019t settled the question, just underlined its urgency. \u201cI have looked to the experts, and they\u2019re all saying different things,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s informed confusion.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n He plans to skip the film festival circuit and get his documentary out as soon as possible. \u201cIt\u2019s a bit of a bummer,\u201d he said, \u201cbut this information has a shelf life.\u201d<\/p>\n Bans on AI personhood?<\/p>\n In some ways, lawmakers have been ahead of the industry in confronting the question of AI consciousness. Several states have advanced anti-personhood legislation for AI. Idaho (opens in new tab)<\/a> led this charge in 2022, followed by Utah in 2024, and there are pending bills in Ohio, (opens in new tab)<\/a> Oklahoma, and Washington. \u201cSophistication is not sentience. It is not personhood,\u201d said Thad Claggett, (opens in new tab)<\/a> a state representative for Ohio who supports the legislation. Essentially, these laws establish AI as \u201cproperty\u201d with no potential for civil rights claims for civil harm.<\/p>\n Alexander, the human rights attorney, worries how broadly the bills define their terms. \u201cThese laws might accidentally ban personhood for people with therapeutic neural implants. \u2026 We don\u2019t want to tell those people they\u2019re not people,\u201d she said. \u201cIf we have AIs that are servants, second-class citizens, that\u2019s bad for human rights.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n But AI rights would not be unlimited, she insists. \u201cGiving robots rights doesn\u2019t mean we can never turn them off\u201d in emergencies. The key would be \u201cdue process\u201d and \u201ca fair and equitable system for turning the robot off.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n One model for protocols might be animal research. Bob Fischer, a Texas State University philosophy professor and researcher at the aptly named thinktank Rethink Priorities, noted during his talk at the summit, \u201cEthical oversight for AI research,\u201d that neither animals nor AI can give informed consent.<\/p>\n Today\u2019s AI models are probably not moral patients, he said, using the philosophical term for beings whose welfare matters. But if they suddenly gain sentience, \u201cwe would essentially have no idea what we were doing.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Such provocations are why Constance Li, executive director of the nonprofit Sentient Futures (formerly AI for Animals) hosted the summit. \u201cNonhuman sentient beings, whether silicon or flesh, aren\u2019t collateral damage,\u201d she said. \u201cThese ideas are fringe, [but] we\u2019re moving the Overton Window.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/1771538506_238_-S3840x2561-FPNG.png\"\/)
Can animal rights inform AI rights? Photo by Emily Teague (@_emilyteague), Courtesy of Sentient Futures\u200b\u200b<\/p>\n