How to Navigate Uncertainty About AI Consciousness
Summary
This paper addresses the ethical dilemma of treating potentially conscious AI and proposes shifting focus to assessing AI valence as a more tractable approach for responsible development.
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# How to Navigate Uncertainty About AI Consciousness Source: [https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.19215](https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.19215) [View PDF](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2608.19215) > Abstract:Given deep uncertainty about the possibility of artificial consciousness, it is unclear how we should treat potentially sentient AI\. On the one hand, we could assume insentience but risk doing terrible harms to entities that deserve moral standing\. On the other hand, we could assume sentience and instead risk wasting resources on insentient machines\. The intractability of questions around AI consciousness mean that this dilemma is hard to escape\. I suggest a way out of that shifts from intractable questions of AI consciousness to tractable questions of AI valence\. Specifically, we can assess whether an AI has states that would constitute valenced experiences if it were conscious\. I show how this is sufficient to ground a responsible approach to the development of potentially conscious AI\. ## Submission history From: Tom McClelland Dr \[[view email](https://arxiv.org/show-email/f5d8cd2f/2608.19215)\] **\[v1\]**Mon, 6 Jul 2026 10:37:36 UTC \(264 KB\)
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