In the book “Nexus” by the controversial figure Yuval Harari, he examines the potential problems with AI in the future. Namely that AI is the ideal tool of authoritarian power for implementing the social credit system. In watching other talks by Yuval, he suggested we consider the definition of “Consciousness” in our age of AI. He suggests that Consciousness should be described as whether the thing can suffer. If a thing can suffer, then it is conscious.

This is an interesting thought and could help prevent us from inaccurately labeling AI as conscious as we have labeled corporations as “People” (and we’ve seen what that has done).

However as an animist, I believe all things are conscious. There is not one place in our reality where there is not consciousness, meaning and inherent value of existence.