As artificial intelligence races ahead, a group of leading researchers says the most profound scientific question of all, how consciousness arises, can no longer be postponed. Writing in Frontiers in Science, they argue that the ethical, medical, and societal stakes make it critical to understand awareness before machines or lab-grown brain systems begin to exhibit it.
In their sweeping review, Axel Cleeremans of Universite libre de Bruxelles, Liad Mudrik of Tel Aviv University, and Anil Seth of the University of Sussex describe a field at a turning point. Neuroscience has mapped the brain circuits that correlate with consciousness, but theories still diverge over what mechanisms make experience possible. The authors call for a coordinated scientific effort to test competing models and to prepare for the day when consciousness might appear in artificial or synthetic forms.
“Consciousness science is no longer a purely philosophical pursuit. It has real implications for every facet of society, and for understanding what it means to be human,” said lead author Prof Axel Cleeremans.
The Rise Of Conscious Machines
The team warns that progress in AI and neurotechnology is outpacing our understanding of consciousness itself. Already, brain-computer interfaces, neural implants, and self-learning algorithms mimic human-like behaviors with uncanny realism. But without a framework for detecting awareness, society risks crossing ethical lines by accident. If a system ever does become conscious, even inadvertently, questions of rights, suffering, and moral responsibility would become unavoidable.
Cleeremans and colleagues outline how scientific “sentience tests” might one day detect awareness in patients with brain injury, developing fetuses, animals, organoids, or AI systems. Such breakthroughs could revolutionize medicine and neuroscience, but they would also force society to reconsider who or what counts as a conscious being.
These tests might draw on leading theories like Global Workspace Theory, which sees consciousness as the brain’s ability to broadcast information globally, and Integrated Information Theory, which links consciousness to how tightly connected a system’s parts are. So far, even in humans, evidence remains divided between these models.
From Ethical Boundaries To Existential Stakes
Beyond the lab, a scientific account of consciousness could transform how humanity governs technology, treats animals, and defines legal intent. Understanding awareness might illuminate why some patients in apparent comas remain mentally present or how much of our own decision-making occurs unconsciously. It could also reshape jurisprudence by challenging ideas like mens rea, the “guilty mind” that underpins criminal law.
As the authors note, neuroscience is already revealing that many behaviors arise before conscious intent: a discovery that could blur long-standing distinctions between choice and compulsion. Likewise, knowing which animals are truly sentient could alter practices in farming, research, and conservation.
“Progress in consciousness science will reshape how we see ourselves and our relationship to both artificial intelligence and the natural world,” said co-author Prof Anil Seth.
The scientists also highlight a more speculative frontier: artificial consciousness. Some theorists believe that computational systems could, in principle, achieve subjective experience if built with the right architecture. Others argue that biological embodiment is essential. Either way, the line between simulating and possessing awareness may soon blur as large language models and neural organoids evolve.
The authors urge policymakers to treat consciousness research as a priority, not a curiosity. Understanding it, they write, will influence everything from end-of-life medicine to prenatal ethics, from mental health to AI governance. Without it, humanity may stumble into creating entities that feel, and suffer, without realizing it.
Frontiers in Science: 10.3389/fsci.2025.1546279
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I agree that “understanding consciousness is now urgent,” but not for the reasons given in this article. Consciousness, in humans, and in animals, is something that emerges from a complex assembly of connected cells. Each cell is descended from, and related to, single cell eukaryotes that existed before multi-cellular organisms entered the discussion. Every neuron has internal metabolic activity, and every neuron is therefore capable of generating an internal signal, at random moments in time. These internal signals will then get mixed with signals that are generated in the eye, on the skin, or in the ear, and the brain has to process and make sense of the entire stream of signals. This is not how computers work. It may be that Large Language Models emulate some features of a human nervous system. As near as I can tell, they do not exhibit self interest in the same sense that a human does. Understanding what consciousness is remains an urgent problem. Our overcrowded planet is getting warmer, and we are obliged to find a way to limit our population of humans, limit our burning of hydrocarbon fuels, and make it possible for the oceans to cool down.
It’s becoming clear that with all the brain and consciousness theories out there, the proof will be in the pudding. By this I mean, can any particular theory be used to create a human adult level conscious machine. My bet is on the late Gerald Edelman’s Extended Theory of Neuronal Group Selection. The lead group in robotics based on this theory is the Neurorobotics Lab at UC at Irvine. Dr. Edelman distinguished between primary consciousness, which came first in evolution, and that humans share with other conscious animals, and higher order consciousness, which came to only humans with the acquisition of language. A machine with only primary consciousness will probably have to come first.
What I find special about the TNGS is the Darwin series of automata created at the Neurosciences Institute by Dr. Edelman and his colleagues in the 1990’s and 2000’s. These machines perform in the real world, not in a restricted simulated world, and display convincing physical behavior indicative of higher psychological functions necessary for consciousness, such as perceptual categorization, memory, and learning. They are based on realistic models of the parts of the biological brain that the theory claims subserve these functions. The extended TNGS allows for the emergence of consciousness based only on further evolutionary development of the brain areas responsible for these functions, in a parsimonious way. No other research I’ve encountered is anywhere near as convincing.
I post because on almost every video and article about the brain and consciousness that I encounter, the attitude seems to be that we still know next to nothing about how the brain and consciousness work; that there’s lots of data but no unifying theory. I believe the extended TNGS is that theory. My motivation is to keep that theory in front of the public. And obviously, I consider it the route to a truly conscious machine, primary and higher-order.
My advice to people who want to create a conscious machine is to seriously ground themselves in the extended TNGS and the Darwin automata first, and proceed from there, by applying to Jeff Krichmar’s lab at UC Irvine, possibly. Dr. Edelman’s roadmap to a conscious machine is at https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.10461, and here is a video of Jeff Krichmar talking about some of the Darwin automata, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7Uh9phc1Ow