I think … uh oh, I’m not sure I can say that just yet. This is a conundrum.

Maybe it’s better to begin by posing the question again: What is consciousness? A dictionary says this:

A sense of one’s personal or collective identity, including the attitudes, beliefs, and sensitivities held by or considered characteristic of an individual or group.

Ok, so how do we know if something – or someone – has a sense of personal identity? You know I do because I say I do, and I might believe you do, even if you say you don’t. It’s a little like saying, “I always lie.” So you would probably believe that I have consciousness even if I don’t get around to saying I do, right? Therefore, saying I have consciousness cannot be the proof of it. We probably all believe that our pets are sentient, even though they never actually say so.

What about this computer I’m using? I can make it say “I have consciousness,” but that doesn’t make it so. Conversely, my pickup truck has never said it does have consciousness, but that doesn’t prove it doesn’t.; there have probably been millions of humans who’ve lived and died without ever worrying about their consciousness enough to proclaim it either.

Which brings me around to my refrigerator, which, late at night, pretends it has an automatic ice-maker, by imitating the sound of ice cubes dropping into a tray. And my wireless router, which inexplicably loses connectivity when I’m in a rush to tube up to the pipes of the internets.

Maybe we can say that machines aren’t sentient, because they can’t do the things we do, or even the things that dogs do. They don’t love, for example, or hate. But what happens when we make a machine that learns to flinch from fear? How will we know the line when they cross it, and become conscious?