For years, the concept of AI consciousness has remained on the fringes, with all but the most powerful proponents of the theory being laughed out of public life.

In reality, opponents point out, the current generation of AI is nothing more than extremely complex statistics — detecting patterns in training data like written materials or imagery so subtle that it can reproduce similar patterns going forward. That can produce a compelling imitation of consciousness, but there's no reason to believe the AI has any actual experience of existence, the way that humans do.

And yet, as AI companies insist that their technology is approaching the human-level cognition known as artificial general intelligence (AGI) — and luminaries like Google DeepMind's Mustafa Suleyman suggest the technology may

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