Gen Z’s surprising belief in AI consciousness grows

A growing number of Generation Z members hold unconventional beliefs about artificial intelligence consciousness, with a quarter already convinced that AI possesses awareness. This finding from a recent EduBirdie survey reveals a significant generational shift in perceptions about machine cognition and highlights how emerging technologies are creating complex psychological relationships between humans and AI systems, potentially foreshadowing new social dynamics as these technologies continue to evolve.

The big picture: A quarter of surveyed Gen Z members believe AI is already conscious, according to a new study by paper-writing service EduBirdie that polled 2,000 individuals born between 1997 and 2012.

• An additional 52 percent think AI is not yet conscious but will develop consciousness in the future.
• The majority (58 percent) of respondents believe AI will eventually “take over” the world, with 44 percent predicting this could happen within the next two decades.

Why this matters: These findings reflect how younger generations are developing surprisingly personal relationships with AI systems, despite most experts maintaining that current AI lacks true consciousness.

• The perception of AI consciousness could significantly influence how society integrates and regulates these technologies in the future.
• These beliefs represent a potential cultural shift in how humans relate to machines, blurring traditional boundaries between sentient beings and tools.

Behavioral implications: A striking 69 percent of Gen Z respondents report always saying “please” and “thank you” to chatbots, revealing how politeness extends to their interactions with AI.

• This finding aligns with a late 2024 TechRadar survey where 67 percent of Americans and 71 percent of Britons admitted being polite to ChatGPT.
• Even more tellingly, 12 percent of the 1,000 people in TechRadar’s poll acknowledged being nice to OpenAI’s chatbot specifically because they fear it might eventually take over the world.

Historical context: The debate about AI consciousness has been contentious in the tech community for years, with occasional high-profile controversies.

• In February 2022, OpenAI co-founder and former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever sparked heated discussions by tweeting that “today’s large neural networks are slightly conscious.”
• A few months later, Google engineer Blake Lemoine was fired after claiming in a Washington Post interview that Google’s Language Model for Dialogue Applications (LaMDA) had become sentient.

Reading between the lines: As AI systems like ChatGPT become increasingly sophisticated at mimicking human conversation, people are forming unprecedented psychological bonds with technology that will likely reshape social dynamics.

• These beliefs about AI consciousness, despite contradicting expert consensus, demonstrate how convincingly modern language models can simulate human-like responses.
• The emergence of these human-AI relationships suggests society may need new frameworks for understanding and categorizing our interactions with increasingly advanced technological systems.