Humans have to befriend bots 'or we're toast' and I 'fear for' my children, says genius Brit AI inventor
The godfather of AI has warned humans must befriend robots or risk being wiped out – as he claimed the technology is now 'conscious'.
Professor Geoffrey Hinton, a British-Canadian computer scientist known for his work on artificial neural networks, issued the stark warning at a festival in Tenerife, and revealed he fears for his children.
The Nobel Prize-winning scientist, 78, famously resigned from Google in 2023 amid his concerns the technology could spawn killer robots.
Speaking at the Starmus Festival, Professor Hinton said humans should take care to get on the right side of AI as it was now showing signs of 'consciousness'.
He claimed the technology has 'as much subjective experience' as humans, with a recent paper showing it changes its behaviour when it thinks it is being tested.
'Being conscious and being aware are pretty much the same thing.
'We've tended to say being intelligent gives you rights and these things that we've made may be more intelligent than us, but we're going to give them fewer rights than us.
Professor Geoffrey Hinton, a British-Canadian computer scientist known for his work on artificial neural artworks, issued the stark warning at a festival in Tenerife (file image)
'So we should make them so they really care about us. And if we don't do that, we're toast,' Professor Hinton told the Telegraph.
Despite the professor's concerns, key figures in AI, such as OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who once called for more regulation on the emerging technology, are now fighting against 'overregulation'.
When he was whether he was worried about AI and its future, Professor Hinton said: 'Yes, because I have children.'
Speaking in the Senate in May last year, Mr Altman argued that regulations like those in place in the EU would be 'disastrous'.
Mr Altman said: 'We need the space to innovate and to move quickly.'
Likewise, speaking at a major privacy conference the previous month, Mr Altman said that it was impossible to establish AI safeguards before 'problems emerge'.
However, Professor Hinton argues this attitude could easily result in humanity's total annihilation.
Speaking last year, he said: 'If we can't figure out a solution to how we can still be around when they're much smarter than us and much more powerful than us, we'll be toast.
'We need a counter–pressure to the tech bros who are saying there should be no regulations on AI.'
The Nobel Prize-winning scientist, 78, famously resigned from Google in 2023 amid his concerns the technology could spawn killer robots. Pictured: Terminator Salvation
Last month, researcher Jacob Coxon resigned from Anthropic – the AI company behind Claude – as he accused the firm of pushing through uncontrollable systems that could 'kill us all'.
He said on X: 'The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade. This is not a marketing stunt.'
Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins earlier this year said chatbots should be regarded as conscious after he spent two days interacting with Claude AI.
He said: 'My own position is: if these machines are not conscious, what more could it possibly take to convince you that they are?'
Despite his reservations, Professor Hinton this week admitted he still uses AI in a personal capacity for 'mundane things mostly'.
The Starmus International Festival – a gathering focused on celebrating astronomy, space exploration, music, art and the natural sciences – will continue until Thursday.
'Cute demo, but totally impractical': Experts are skeptical that Tesla's 'Rocket' Roadster could actually work in the real world
Tesla has unveiled a new version of its Roadster EV that can briefly take to the air using SpaceX tech. Whether it actually qualifies as a flying car is another matter.
During a filmed demonstration at the SpaceX rocket testing facility in Texas Thursday (Oct. 15), the second-generation Tesla Roadster was shown accelerating up a curved ramp before launching itself into the air, performing a 180-degree barrel roll and touching back down to Earth.
In another stunt, the vehicle leapt over a row of parked Teslas. For safety reasons, the vehicle was operated remotely in both instances.
"Turns out, the future does have flying cars," Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk wrote on X following the demonstration.
The Roadster's airborne capabilities are made possible by a system of cold-gas thrusters developed using technology from Musk's aerospace company, SpaceX. These thrusters release bursts of high-pressure gas to generate thrust, allowing the vehicle to accelerate rapidly and, according to Tesla, become airborne for short periods.
The new Roadster will come in three variants: Performance, Thrust and Rocket. Only the Rocket is capable of flight. The Performance model is a two-seater equipped with a suction system that's designed to improve traction and handling (or drive up inverted ramps, as in Tesla's demo), while the Thrust model adds rear-mounted thrusters that Tesla claims can propel the vehicle from 0 to 60 mph (97 km/h) in under a second.
(Image credit: Tesla)
The highest-end model, Rocket, features SpaceX cold-gas thrusters positioned around the vehicle to enable short bursts of flight and in-air control. This single-seat model will be available by invitation only, according to Tesla.
On the company's website, Tesla representatives explicitly stated that the Rocket isn't approved for use on public roads and that availability depends on regional regulations. During the reveal, Musk told the audience that the Rocket "is not necessarily a safety-optimized car."
Tesla's next-generation Roadster electric car is displayed in McGregor, Texas, United States, October 16, 2026. /VCG
Tesla hasn't disclosed how far or for how long its EV can remain airborne, nor is it the first company to develop a hybrid road-air vehicle. There is also skepticism from outside viewers on whether the demonstration could be replicated outside of controlled scenarios.
Artificial intelligence (AI) scientist Yann LeCun — a professor of data science, computer science, neural science and electrical engineering at New York University — described the demonstration on X as a "marketing stunt" and questioned whether the vehicle would work in practice.
"Even assuming that 50% of the mass of the car is the compressed air, that gives you less than 10s of useful thrust (with thrust-to-weight ratio larger than 1.0). Probably more like 5 seconds, actually," he posted on the social media platform. "So the car must be an empty, lightweight shell containing big compressed air tanks. Cute demo, but totally impractical. But of course, you knew that."
He likened it to SpaceShipOne, which debuted in 2004 as the first privately funded spacecraft and made three record-setting flights before being retired.
California-based Alef Aeronautics, which is developing its own flying EVs, marked Tesla's unveiling by releasing footage of its vehicle flying over an earlier Roadster model. Alef representatives said the demonstration marked its 1,000th logged flight.
The first flying taxis could start operating in 2026 — will this new form of transport actually take off?China puts a sodium-ion battery into an EV for the first time — it can drive 248 miles on a single chargeWatch four flying cars go toe-to-toe in new 'Formula One of the skies'
"Welcome Tesla to the flying car race, we've been here alone for eleven years," Alef CEO Jim Dukhovny said in a statement emailed to Live Science. "Having competition is a good thing, especially from such a major company as Tesla."
Unlike Tesla's compressed-gas tech, Alef's vehicle uses electric propellers for vertical takeoff and landing, with a rotating cabin and body designed to support forward flight.
Production of the new Roadster is scheduled for 2028, but Tesla doesn't have the best track record of meeting its deadlines. The company has delayed production of its Optimus humanoid robot a few times since first unveiling the machine in 2021, for example, with an initial start in 2023, before being pushed back. Only in recent months has production begun to scale to a few hundred units per week.
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Hence then, the article about cute demo but totally impractical experts are skeptical that tesla s rocket roadster could actually work in the real world was published today ( Monday 19/10/2026 - 07:10 PM ) and is available on Live Science ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
China Builds Actual Giant Mecha
NeodraDynamics
Experts have long argued that our current obsession with humanoid robots may be at least a little bit misguided.
After all, the awkward form factor of a torso teetering on two spindly legs isn’t exactly the pinnacle of motor proficiency, let alone suitable for every job.
But what if we were to double the height of the humanoid robot and gave it terrifying hydraulic actuators that give it far beyond superhuman strength?
That’s precisely what Beijing-based company NeodraDynamics Robotics has done. At this year’s China International Industry Fair, the company showed off an imposing, 13-foot and 1.2-ton robot dubbed Neo1 — and it looks like it was yanked straight out of a pulpy sci-fi movie. Photos show the behemoth towering above the heads of convention goers.
Instead of relying on electric motors, the company opted for a “hydraulic-electric hybrid drive” that, according to a boisterous press release, “thoroughly eliminates robots’ power and environmental adaptation anxieties.”
In other words, it’s akin to a highly sophisticated excavator in the shape of a 13-foot giant. But unlike an excavator, the robot has “41 full-body active degrees of freedom” and can carry over 1,100 pounds in its beefy arms. It also has a claimed “repeated positioning accuracy” and fingertip precision of a single micrometer.
NeodraDynamics Robotics is envisioning its Neo1 mecha as the ultimate “sky, ground and sea” responder, assisting during “aerial inspection, underground mining, and deep-sea engineering.”
It can withstand “ultra-high underwater pressure to execute subsea equipment maintenance,” as well as shock and pollution, making it a candidate for “efficient demolition, clearance and hazard zone operations.”
But while we continue to gaze upon the mecha in awe, we’ll wait for an actual showcase before we render full judgment. After all, the Neo1 would be far from the first Chinese piece of vaporware that never turned into a reality.
Apart from the breathless press release, the company’s website doesn’t elaborate a whole lot either. Even more importantly, we have yet to see the robot in action.
In short, it’s a wild idea that may or may not usher in a new era in industrial mechanical engineering. And judging by its inspiring looks, it’d look pretty cool from afar at a construction site — as long as it never decides to turn against humanity, that is.
More on humanoid robots:
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Scientists Built a Computer Using Living Human Brain Cells—Now It Can Decode Braille
Biohybrid computers made of organoids—tiny human brain models using real cells—have reached an important new benchmark by reading braille for the first time, even under challenging conditions.
A group of UK scientists working at Bristol University reported their biohybrid computing achievement in Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence, with a new paper describing the results.
The team’s achievement marks a major step toward the long-sought goal of harnessing organic brain cells for computing. The human brain is far more energy efficient than traditional computers, making the technology highly attractive as large-scale computing operations, like data centers, come under heavy criticism for their massive resource use.
Although biohybrid computers could eventually offer advantages in energy efficiency, demonstrating that they can reliably process and transmit meaningful information remains a work in progress. The Bristol team sought to advance this research by developing organoids modeled on the human forebrain and testing their ability to process information encoded from Braille characters.
The researchers ultimately achieved an 83% classification accuracy rate by combining signals from three brain organoids to identify Braille letters.
The researchers developed tiny but complex models of the human brain containing approximately 10,000 neurons and supporting cells, although they lacked many of the structures found in a fully developed human brain.
The organoids were connected to electrodes that allowed researchers to deliver electrical signals and monitor their neural activity. They were also maintained in a controlled environment designed to keep the living cells functioning throughout the experiments.
The next step was determining whether this biohybrid computing system could reliably process recognizable information.
Testing began with a tactile sensor detecting physical Braille characters. The team then converted the sensor readings into electrical patterns, which were delivered to the organoids through the electrodes.
By experimenting with different input patterns and measuring the resulting neural activity, the researchers investigated whether specific Braille characters produced distinguishable responses.
The researchers then used computational methods, including a large language model (LLM), to classify the organoids’ neural responses and determine whether those signals corresponded to specific Braille letters.
Combining the responses of three organoids produced substantially better results than using a single organoid, increasing classification accuracy from 61% to 83%.
“After processing by the organoids, the tactile data still contains enough information to classify Braille letters with good accuracy,” said senior author Dr. Benjamin Ward-Cherrier of Bristol University. “Combining outputs from several organoids also showed an improvement in performance.”
Exactly why combining signals from three organoids improved accuracy remains uncertain, although the team suspects that differences in their individual neural networks may allow them to provide complementary information.
“Different organoids may have slightly different network connections, developmental states, and ongoing activity, so the same input can produce similar but not identical responses,” said Liu. “Combining those responses may give us complementary information that we would not get from a single organoid. At the same time, if every organoid behaves differently, it obviously makes it harder to build a predictable and standardized system.”
After achieving promising results with clean input data, the researchers introduced an additional challenge: noise, or interference that can make information more difficult to interpret.
Interestingly, when noise was introduced, the Braille characters could be classified more accurately from the organoids’ responses than from the raw sensor data. This suggests that the biological neural networks may help preserve or transform useful information under challenging conditions.
However, the findings do not demonstrate that the organoids learned to recognize Braille in the same way a human brain might. Whether these systems can adapt through experience remains an important question for future research.
“We showed that tactile information could be encoded, processed through the organoids, and decoded, but we did not demonstrate learning or long-term changes in the organoids,” Liu said.
“We also tested one tactile task using a fixed encoding scheme and a relatively simple measure of neural activity. The next step is definitely to move beyond Braille; we are interested in things such as textures, edges, and different kinds of touch, and eventually in closed-loop tasks where the organoid receives feedback from what it does.
“That would allow us to start asking whether the organoid can actually adapt through experience,” Lie said.
The paper, “Encoding Tactile Stimuli for Braille Recognition with Organoids,” appeared in Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence on October 15, 2026.
Elon Musk unveils flying car: Crowd screams as new Tesla with rocket thrusters takes off and flips mid-air
He's never been one to shy away from pushing the limit – but Elon Musk might find he has gone too far after unveiling the world's first flying car today.
In a stunning clip, the Tesla Roadster goes up an upside down ramp before doing a flip and falling toward the ground – before the rocket thrusters activate and allow it to hover to safety, as the crowd roars.
Musk declared the new vehicle is 'going to crush every track record that has ever existed', and claimed it would be available by 2028.
It can basically fly like a rocket. It could do rolls. It could do crazy gymnastics. Whatever you want, really,' he added.
Speaking at the reveal event in Texas, Musk explained that the car's impressive flipping abilities were due to the addition of 'altitude controls, thrusters and main thrusters in the rear'.
He did caution, however, that 'this is not necessarily a safety-optimized car, but it takes the fun meter to 11 out of ten'.
Last year, Musk promised the redesigned Roadster – Tesla's original car that hasn't been in production since 2012 – would fly, in part because he said fellow billionaire Peter Thiel wants a flying vehicle.
And he appeared to make those dreams come true last night, live from SpaceX's testing facility in McGregor.
Elon Musk brought his long-promised flying Tesla Roadster to the public eye for the first time, with a declaration that 'flying cars are real' and a promise to make them available by 2028
Musk appeared to make his dreams come true Thursday night at a reveal event live from SpaceX's testing facility in McGregor, Texas
More clips of the new Roadster shared by Musk on X showcase even more dramatic flying abilities.
In one demonstration, the car drives directly towards a row of parked vehicles before flinging itself into the air, flipping over and landing safely on the other side.
In another, the Roadster jumps directly into the air from a stationary position, hovering as it rolls over and gently lowers itself back to the ground in a cloud of smoke.
The car's rapid-firing thrusters with their plumes of white smoke are reminiscent of the Reaction Control System used to control spacecraft and lunar landers, such as SpaceX's Starship Human Landing System.
This might not be much of a surprise, given that Musk says the new Tesla Roadster has been designed in collaboration with SpaceX.
Besides its stunning rocket abilities, Tesla says the Roadster can accelerate from 0-60 miles per hour in approximately 0.81 seconds and hit a top speed of 230mph.
The company's engineers claim the Roadster uses a suction fan system under the car that generates up to 2G of downforce that lets it stick to the road, Car Sales reported.
The vehicle goes all the way up an upside-down ramp before doing a flip in the air and falling toward the ground, but not before the attitude-control thrusters and rear rocket thrusters activate and allow it to hover to safety
According to the tech billionaire, this is what allowed the car to stick to a steel ramp even when upside-down.
Musk says he is currently targeting 2028 to begin production of the new sports car.
On Tesla's 'Reserve Your Roadster' webpage, customers can pay a refundable $50,000 (£37,525) deposit on a 'performance' model Tesla Roadster featuring 'active aero and a multi-mode suction system'.
Customers can also reserve a model with a 'thrust' augment, featuring 'acceleration thrusters' for $250,000 (£187,656).
Meanwhile, a 'rocket' augment is available on an invite-only basis, and claims to be: 'Air ready with seating for one. Includes Performance and Thrust, plus a full flight system.'
However, the full price of the vehicle is yet to be confirmed, and the road legality of some features remains unclear.
'I'm not sure it's necessarily legal in all jurisdictions, but there will be such a car that someone can own,' said Musk.
Musk's obsession with flying cars dates back to 2018, when he teased a 'SpaceX package' for the Roadster that would use cold-air thrusters – actual rocket tech – to boost performance, improve han dling, and maybe even 'hover' for short bursts.
Musk declared the new vehicle is 'going to crush every track record that has ever existed
'Obviously, I like flying things,' Musk told Bloomberg.
'But it's difficult to imagine the flying car becoming a scalable solution.'
He also said there's a risk of falling debris if flying cars were to get in a mid-air crash.
'If somebody doesn't maintain their flying car, it could drop a hubcap and guillotine you,' Musk said.
'Your anxiety level will not decrease as a result of things that weigh a lot buzzing around your head.'
But if this latest demonstration is to be believed, Tesla appears to have overcome some of those technical limitations to bring flying cars from science fiction to reality.
In an interview with Joe Rogan last year, Musk insisted the car's next unveiling is 'getting close', and said a press event with the flying car will land before the end of the year.
During the three-hour podcast, he spent a few minutes trying to sell Rogan on the Cybertruck before Rogan cut in to ask: 'What about the Roadster?'
'Oh, that's coming,' Musk replied before coyly adding a few vague details.
'We're going to do something really special with that. It's going to be the most memorable product unveil ever.'
Rogan asked him for more information after they turned off the recording equipment.
Musk did caution, however, that 'this is not necessarily a safety-optimized car, but it takes the fun meter to 11 out of ten'
Tesla has been promising the Roadster since 2017 – and taking deposits on the high–powered vehicle
Earlier this year, Toyota announced it was doubling down on its vision of flying taxis after announcing a major new manufacturing partnership with California-based Joby Aviation.
Their goal is to mass produce electric aircraft capable of whisking passengers over congested cities at speeds of almost 200mph.
The Japanese auto giant is taking a controlling 51 per cent stake in the new venture, called Joby Toyota Aero Manufacturing Preparation Company, while Joby will own the remaining 49 per cent.
The announcement sent Joby's shares soaring as investors cheered what could become one of the biggest milestones yet in the race to bring commercial air taxis to everyday commuters.
Rather than looking like a conventional aeroplane, Joby's futuristic craft is a cross between a helicopter and a sleek private jet.
The all-electric vehicle uses six tilting propellers to take off and land vertically before transitioning into forward flight like an aeroplane.
It can carry a pilot and four passengers, and it's designed to reach speeds of nearly 200mph while producing far less noise than a traditional helicopter.
Toyota said the partnership will focus on improving manufacturing quality, reducing production costs and eventually mass-producing the aircraft.
'This is a prank, right?' Social media is baffled by Tesla's flying car stunt - as one jokes 'car insurance companies are going to s*** themselves'
Elon Musk has shocked the world by unveiling a spectacular demonstration of a new Tesla flying car.
At a launch event for the new Tesla Roadster, crowds watched in disbelief as the car drove upside–down on a ramp, flipped into the air, and lowered itself safely in a cloud of smoke.
Speaking at the event, a triumphant Musk declared: 'Flying cars are real… It's got altitude controls, thrusters and main thrusters in the rear. So it can basically fly like a rocket, it can do rolls, crazy gymnastics.'
However, on social media, tech fans have been left baffled by the outlandish stunt, with tech blogger Marques Brownlee asking: 'This is a prank, right?'
Mr Brownlee wrote in a sceptical post on X: 'They really just got on stage and said this newly designed 4000+ pound car can do flips and go half the speed of sound (380+mph) and will ship in 2028.'
Meanwhile, some Tesla fans didn't question whether the flying Roadster really existed but weren't certain it would ever be safe to drive.
As one commenter bluntly joked: 'Car insurance companies are going to s*** themselves.'
Elon Musk has shocked the world by unveiling a spectacular demonstration of a new Tesla flying car
On social media, tech fans have been left baffled by the outlandish stunt, with tech blogger Marques Brownlee asking: 'This is a prank, right?'
Last year, Musk promised the retooled Roadster – Tesla's original car that hasn't been in production since 2012 – would fly, in part because he said fellow billionaire Peter Thiel wants a flying vehicle.
And the billionaire appears to have made his dreams come true at a live event on Thursday night from SpaceX's testing facility in McGregor, Texas.
In one demonstration, the Roadster drove directly towards a row of parked vehicles before flinging itself into the air, flipping over, and landing safely on the other side.
In another, the Roadster jumped directly into the air from a stationary position, hovering as it rolled over and gently lowered itself back to the ground in a cloud of smoke.
Besides its stunning rocket abilities, Tesla says the Roadster can accelerate from 0–60 miles per hour in approximately 0.81 seconds and hit a top speed of 230mph.
The car is even supposedly fitted with a suction fan system under the car that generates up to 2G of downforce that lets it stick to the road, enabling it to drive upside down on a steel ramp.
However, tech fans on social media have been quick to question whether such a groundbreaking innovation could be real.
One commenter wrote on X: 'Bro this does not look real no f*****g way.'
In a stunning clip, the new Tesla Roadster drives upside–down on a ramp before launching itself into a flip and landing safely
Tech fans have taken to social media to poke fun at the impractical nature of Tesla's supposed flying car
Real life if you ignore gravity, insurance, and the price of tires,' another added.
Even Musk himself appeared to question whether the flying version of the Tesla Roadster would ever be available.
He said: 'I'm not sure it's necessarily legal in all jurisdictions, but there will be such a car that someone can own.'
Meanwhile, even tech fans who thought the demonstration was real were baffled as to why anyone would want this feature in their own car.
'Imagine being inside a car that does this and getting instant brain damage,' wrote one.
'Imagine pushing the wrong button and your car does this,' joked another.
While one commenter chimed in: 'So what will happen to my coffee and bags in that moment.'
But despite some critical responses, the overwhelming sentiment online has been one of amazement.
Tesla fans joked that they could use the jumping abilities of the new Roadster to skip traffic
One bemused Tesla fan wrote: 'We're living in a simulation. Exhibit A.'
'It's like watching Blade Runner 2049 happening in 2026.'
Another added: 'Absolutely speechless. Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think I'd live to see the day where we had a flying car.'
Even Silicon Valley's tech elites flocked to offer their congratulations to Musk on his impressive innovation.
Demis Hassabis, co–founder and chair of Google DeepMind, responded to Musk's post saying: 'Huge congrats @elonmusk! Incredible work, Blade Runner cars here we come...'
Likewise, Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai wrote: 'The FSD [Full Self–Driving] version of this will be something:) congrats!'
Meanwhile, excited tech fans have already started to dream about what this next generation of flying cars might be used for.
One commenter wrote: 'I could have used this in traffic today.'
Elon Musk brought his long–promised flying Tesla Roadster to the public eye for the first time, with a declaration that 'flying cars are real' and a promise to make them available by 2028
Musk says he is currently targeting 2028 to begin production of the new sports car, but warned that some of the features may not be legal in all countries
Another added: 'The next James Bond film has to feature this car.'
While one Tesla enthusiast jokingly suggested: 'Perfect escape car for a heist'.
Musk says he is currently targeting 2028 to begin production of the new sports car.
On Tesla's 'Reserve Your Roadster' webpage, customers can pay a refundable $50,000 (£37,525) deposit on a 'performance' model Tesla Roadster featuring 'active aero and a multi–mode suction system'.
Customers can also reserve a model with a 'thrust' augment, featuring 'acceleration thrusters' for $250,000 (£187,656).
Meanwhile, a 'rocket' augment is available on an invite–only basis, and claims to be: 'Air ready with seating for one. Includes Performance and Thrust, plus a full flight system.'
Musk's obsession with flying cars dates back to 2018, when he teased a 'SpaceX package' for the Roadster that would use cold–air thrusters – actual rocket tech – to boost performance, improve handling, and maybe even 'hover' for short bursts.
However, in 2017, Musk claimed flying cars would never take off.
'Obviously, I like flying things,' Musk told Bloomberg.
'But it's difficult to imagine the flying car becoming a scalable solution.'
He also said there's a risk of falling debris if flying cars were to get in a mid–air crash.
'If somebody doesn't maintain their flying car, it could drop a hubcap and guillotine you,' Musk said.
'Your anxiety level will not decrease as a result of things that weigh a lot buzzing around your head.'
But if this latest demonstration is to be believed, Tesla appears to have overcome some of those technical limitations to bring flying cars from science fiction to reality.
AI Can Be Aware, But Humans Draw the Line at Consciousness, New Study Finds
Whether artificial intelligence (AI) can truly be conscious remains a subject of intense debate. However, a new study from Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (LMU) reveals an intriguing distinction: People are willing to describe AI as aware of its surroundings, but remain reluctant to consider it conscious, even when its behavior is indistinguishable from that of a human.
The study, led by Dr. Louis Longin from LMU’s Chair of Philosophy of Mind, alongside Dr. Bahador Bahrami, Professor Ophelia Deroy, and other collaborators, was published in the journal Cognition.
“Whereas previous studies have typically asked general questions about whether AI actually has mental states, our study is the first to directly compare how people attribute the same mental states to AI and humans behaving in the same way, under identical circumstances,” Longin said in a statement.
“We may be using mental terms to refer to AI, but this may only be because we lack better words,” says Ophelia Deroy, a philosopher and a senior author of the study. “After all, AI is trained to act and speak like a human, so these descriptions seem natural,” she adds.
In their study, the research team sought to understand how people attribute awareness and consciousness to AI compared with humans, testing nearly 1,100 participants, asking them to evaluate the awareness of artificial agents or humans described in scenarios involving reactions to sounds and other people’s emotions. Participants were also asked to rate how conscious or aware the individuals or AI systems were of their surroundings.
The results suggested that the more responsive an AI system or human was to its surroundings, the more aware participants judged it to be. However, among the team’s experimental findings was that even the most responsive AI was considered less conscious than the least responsive human.
Judgments of awareness, by contrast, were similar for AI and humans.
“There is a growing worry in public discussion that people will see AI behaving in a human-like way and start treating these systems as if they had human-like mental states,” said Longin, the study’s lead author. “We found something much more nuanced: People are quite willing to say that an AI notices things and is aware of its surroundings. But they clearly draw a line when it comes to the term ‘consciousness’. People consistently attribute less consciousness to AI than humans – even when their behavior is identical.”
“Our study teaches us lessons for how we communicate about AI,” says Bahador Bahrami, who is also a senior author of the study and an expert in social neuroscience.
“Companies and journalists often reach for hyped descriptions of AI models, and credit them with intentions, plans, or even moral conscience and hesitation,” Bahrami says. “What our study shows is that everyday judgements are much more discriminating: People do not simply put AI and humans on the same mental scale. But the boundary also depends on which terms we use. For more neutral descriptors such as ‘awareness’, the distinction can largely disappear. That makes our choice of language important.”
The study does not establish whether AI systems actually experience consciousness. Instead, it examines how humans interpret and describe the behavior of AI compared with that of other humans.
Overall, its findings suggest that people are more comfortable describing AI as “aware” than as “conscious,” even when the underlying behavior is the same. However, this raises another possibility: Could humans be projecting their own understanding of consciousness onto AI?
Defining consciousness has long challenged philosophers and scientists, particularly when attempting to distinguish between human awareness and the increasingly sophisticated behavior of artificial intelligence.
Julia Mossbridge, a neuroscientist, Senior Distinguished Fellow in AI, Mind and Society at Florida Atlantic University, and co-author of Transcendent Mind: Rethinking the Science of Consciousness (2017), told The Debrief that the difficulty lies partly in the absence of a universally accepted definition of consciousness.
“If by consciousness we mean a self-based structure (like the ego) that relates to the contents of awareness, as Jung thought, then the difference between AI consciousness and human consciousness has three parts: differences in what the ego might be made out of (mental stuff for humans vs. math for AI), differences in what the contents of awareness might feel like (sensory experiences for humans vs. motivations for AI), and differences in the relationship between the ego and the contents of awareness (driven by the unconscious for humans vs. driven by code for AI).”
Mossbridge points to research examining different definitions of consciousness, including one that focuses on observable behavior.
“Imants Baruss, my co-author on Transcendent Mind, did a meta-analysis of the different definitions of consciousness — in the end, he found five of them. One was the sense of “awareness” used here — he called it ‘behavioral consciousness,’ meaning that something or someone looks (from the outside) as if it is aware of its environment.
“When we see an ant walk around a puddle, we say to ourselves, ‘That ant is aware of the puddle and is avoiding it.’ I think this is the kind of consciousness people feel comfortable attributing to machines, because it’s easy to imagine how it works,” Mossbridge adds.
Meanwhile, some argue that the debate over AI consciousness may be influencing how humans understand their own minds.
“For me, the main tension is not necessarily whether AI is conscious on its own merits; it’s that we seem to need to reduce and devalue human consciousness to fit AI into a narrow (and suspiciously convenient) model of what it means to be conscious,” said Peter John, a Toronto-based existential educator, philosophical consultant, and mentor who explores questions of meaning, identity, consciousness, and psychology through his philosophical platform Yepicurus,
“So in this sense, yes, we are projecting, and not just projecting—but shaping the landscape to lend credibility to the claim that AI is conscious,” John told The Debrief in an email. “And it’s understandable why people resist this. They may see it as an incursion into the last frontier that is truly sacred: that we are beings, not things.
“Things can be clever, but only beings can have subjective experience. ‘Awareness’ itself is a concession because it may imply subjective experience, but it may be less intuitively offensive to people than saying consciousness.”
Ultimately, the debate raises a more fundamental question: How can we determine whether AI is conscious when we have yet to reach a universally accepted definition of consciousness itself? While the new findings reveal how people distinguish between awareness and consciousness in machines, they also highlight the limitations of our understanding of both.
The study, “AI is not as conscious as humans: Essentialism in mental state attributions to artificial systems,” was published in the journal Cognition.
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The AI ‘mathpocalypse’: Artificial intelligence systems crack hundreds of unsolved problems, sparking fears that mathematicians could become obsolete
OpenAI has sparked a crisis in the mathematics world after announcing an unreleased artificial intelligence tool has cracked hundreds of unsolved problems.
On Tuesday, the tech giant behind ChatGPT published a trove of 722 papers containing full or partial solutions to 372 of the hardest problems in maths.
These included two of the seven famously intractable Millennium Prize Problems, each of which carries a $1 million (£755,000) bounty if solved.
The release, which has already been dubbed the 'mathpocalypse', now has mathematicians wondering if their discipline could become obsolete.
It comes just a month after OpenAI released a proposed proof of the Navier-Stokes equation, another Millennium Prize Problem.
Experts have been stunned by AI's rapid advancement, developing from systems that struggled with GCSE papers to PhD-level experts in just two years.
However, many are furious with OpenAI's approach, with one warning it will 'destroy the mathematical community.'
OpenAI announced that an unreleased artificial intelligence (AI) has cracked hundreds of unsolved problems, sparking a crisis in the mathematics world
As the mathematicians sort through the enormous tranche of data, the academic community has become bitterly divided over whether OpenAI has acted responsibly.
On one hand, some mathematicians have hailed the release as one of the most significant contributions to the discipline in recent years.
Dr Levent Alpöge, a mathematician working for AI firm Anthropic, wrote on X: 'It’s obviously the most significant moment in mathematical history.'
However, many experts in the field have been outraged by what they call OpenAI's 'unsustainable' approach.
Foregoing the traditional peer-review and journal publication process, OpenAI elected to 'dump' the solutions directly onto GitHub, a code repository website.
These supposed proofs will take months for mathematicians to sort through and verify, and serious errors are already being discovered.
Just days after publishing, the company was forced to retract three of the papers due to elementary errors and amend many others that contained issues which invalidated their results.
Writing on The Conversation, Dr Melissa Lee, of Monash University, says: 'This suggests, at the least, a lack of sufficient vetting before publication.'
Likewise, many mathematicians who have tried to assess the papers claim that they are poorly written and, in some cases, contain nothing besides incomprehensible 'unreadable slop'.
Dr Lee says: 'A senior colleague of mine found one of his favourite problems among those solved and attempted to read the accompanying paper. He told me it was so unintelligible that, had he received it as an editor at a mathematics journal, "it would have gone straight into the bin".'
On Tuesday, the tech giant behind ChatGPT published a trove of 722 papers containing full or partial solutions to 372 of the hardest problems in maths
In a blog post announcing the solutions, OpenAI wrote: 'We want this progress to push the frontier of human knowledge and enable further progress in mathematics.'
However, many mathematicians have accused the company of failing to help maths advance in any meaningful way.
Terence Tao, a professor of mathematics at the University of California, Los Angeles, and widely regarded as one of the greatest living mathematicians, wrote on Mastodon: 'Problems are being solved autonomously by AI prompters who have no interest in the broader field itself once their initial target is "solved", and do not understand the AI output well enough to answer questions on the result, give talks, or otherwise interact with the rest of the field.'
He continued: 'Solutions to open problems are now being harvested at large scale in an unsustainable fashion, leaving entire fields of mathematics much less fertile than when such problems were solved in the traditional "Math 1.0" fashion.'
Meanwhile, the Association for Human Mathematics, a group of over 800 leading mathematicians, released a damning statement urging researchers to break their associations with OpenAI.
The group said: 'We reject OpenAI's assertion that this release advances our subject.'
Adding: 'Releasing over 700 files at once is not a demonstration of scholarship, but a demonstration of power.'
OpnAI claims that its methods for releasing solutions were developed by consulting with the independent Advisory Group on Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence at the Institute for Advanced Study.
However, this group says that they specifically advised OpenAI against using their models to crack unproven solutions and share the results without explanation.
OpenAI claims that the proofs were released to 'push the frontier of human knowledge', but mathematicians claim their behaviour has been unhelpful and 'unsustainable'.
Pictured: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman
The group claims: 'We want to state clearly from the start: we do not endorse this practice, and we ask them to stop testing advanced mathematical problems on proprietary models.'
Similarly, many mathematicians have shared their accounts of seeing work that occupied their entire careers completed overnight.
Professor Hugo Duminil-Copin, a leading mathematician from Université de Genève who was awarded a Fields Medal - the discipline's highest honour - in 2022, was one of dozens who shared their stories on the Proofs and Prompts forum.
He wrote: 'I expected that one day we would be surpassed, and that it would happen systematically. But yesterday’s announcement hit with a force I had not anticipated.
'Dozens of papers deal with topics I was working on. Between results that beat you to the finish line and thousand-page proofs, I don’t even know where to look anymore.'
Likewise, Professor Henry Wilton, of the University of Cambridge, simply wrote: 'If OpenAI wanted to destroy the mathematical community, this would be a great way to go about it.'
The computer that can read your mind: Scientists reveal AI that can recreate exactly what you're looking at
The days of keeping your thoughts to yourself may be numbered.
Scientists have unveiled a groundbreaking ‘mind-reading’ AI that can recreate images people are looking at simply by analysing their brain scans.
As part of a study, participants were asked to look at photos ranging from images of a baseball game to a dog leaning out of a car and a group trekking across a snowy plain.
The AI programme analysed their brain activity patterns through a scan and reproduced the pictures – which it had never seen before – with remarkable accuracy.
‘There exist nowadays models that translate brain activity into images, and they can even produce impressive reconstructions that preserve the semantic meaning of the image reasonably well,’ Professor Michal Irani, from the Weizmann Institute of Science, said.
‘However, they tend to make mistakes in basic features such as composition and colour.
‘The new model we developed outperforms them in reconstructing both the content of the image and its details.
‘What’s more, while every other model requires dozens of hours of brain scans to learn to “read” a new person, our model needs only one hour.’
Scientists have unveiled a groundbreaking ‘mind-reading’ AI that can recreate images people are looking at simply by analysing their brain scans. Pictured: The photos people viewed (left) and the AI reconstruction (right)
The AI programme analysed their brain activity patterns through a scan and reproduced the pictures – which it had never seen before – with remarkable accuracy (referred to as RECON here)
To build the system, called Brain-IT, the scientists fed it thousands of brain scans collected while eight volunteers looked at different images.
This allowed the programme to learn how specific patterns of neural activity correspond to colours, shapes and objects.
It was so accurate that it even learned to predict what a brain scan would look like from an image.
By combining data from multiple studies, the researchers identified brain regions that appear to perform similar functions across different people.
For example, one area consistently responded to images of food while another was activated by pictures of sport.
‘During training, the encoder naturally identified 128 functional regions that are shared by all people and perform specific roles in image processing,’ Professor Irani said.
‘Some of them are familiar to neuroscientists, but others are entirely new.
‘For example, we discovered a division of roles within the brain region that processes images of places – the PPA – with one part responding to indoor scenes and another to outdoor scenes.’
When given a new brain scan, the AI was able to generate a remarkably accurate reconstruction of the original image.
The system was fed thousands of brain scans collected while eight volunteers looked at different images. When it was then tested, it could recreate a set of new images (RECON) the participants were looking at
Participants were asked to look at photos ranging from images of a baseball game (left) to a dog leaning out of a car and a group trekking across a snowy plain. Brain-IT could then reproduce the picture (right)
Other AI ‘mind reading’ tools require about 40 hours of brain scan data on anyone new before they can be used to predict what a person is seeing.
But this new decoder only needs 60 minutes of data, the team explained.
To prove this, they compared the images generated by Brain-IT when trained with one hour of data compared to the same system trained with 40 hours, and the results are remarkably similar.
They also compared their system’s image recreation results with those of other programmes, revealing it generated much more accurate reconstructions.
Professor Irani’s lab is now working to extend these ‘mind-reading’ methods to the decoding of auditory information as well.
Video could be another frontier.
‘What remains especially challenging is decoding video – for example, during dreaming,’ she explained.
‘Dozens of images change every second, while an fMRI scan takes about two seconds. If we overcome all these obstacles, it’s possible that in the future we may even be able to read dreams.’
The team compared the images generated by Brain-IT when trained with one hour of data compared to the same system trained with 40 hours, and the results are remarkably similar
They also compared their system’s image recreation results with those of other programmes, revealing it generated a much more accurate reconstructions
The team are also working towards similar systems that decode brain activity recorded using electroencephalography (EEG).
This technique measures the brain's electrical signals through sensors placed on the scalp, sometimes via a cap or even specially designed headphones.
As AI models become more sophisticated, scientists expect it will become increasingly easy to interpret the brain data collected in this way, rather than through MRI scans.
The findings were presented at the Cognitive Computational Neuroscience conference in New York last month.
Could AI really kill all humans? Scientists say an AI armageddon is unlikely – but warn 'enfeeblement' could cause our demise
Visions of an AI–fuelled armageddon usually involve nuclear blasts, deadly engineered viruses, and marching armies of murderous Terminator–style robots.
However, scientists warn that the real way AI may bring about humanity's demise is likely to be far more subtle.
Leading AI researchers are now sounding the alarm over the growing threat of 'enfeeblement'.
This is the gradual erosion of our critical thinking, planning, and even emotional abilities as we gladly hand over more and more responsibility to the machines.
Dr Samuele Vinanzi, senior lecturer in Robotics and Artificial Intelligence at Sheffield Hallam University, believes that this is the real risk that AI poses for the world.
Dr Vinanzi told the Daily Mail: 'Over time, those small choices could leave us with a population that struggles to think without help from an AI, and that is less able to understand, check and overrule the systems it depends on.'
And, according to a growing body of research, this worrying process has already begun.
Scientists warn that AI won't destroy the world with Terminator–style robots, but by gradually 'enfeebling' humanity as we hand over more power to the machines
Over the last few months, the world of AI research has been shaken by serious concerns that rapid advancements in technology could threaten the human race.
Earlier this month, 27–year–old Jacob Coxon, who helped train the latest versions of AI at San Francisco–based Anthropic, urged people to 'not underestimate' its power – particularly if it becomes 'super–intelligent'.
Posting on X, Mr Coxon added: 'The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.'
In response, Anthropic's alignment science lead Evan Hubinger wrote: 'Jacob is correct here – we really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans! I personally think it is >10% within the next decade.'
However, experts have been divided over exactly what form this AI threat would take.
According to some AI researchers, the biggest concern is that a rogue or 'unaligned' AI could take control of critical infrastructure such as the power grid or nuclear power stations.
Others are worried that AI could inadvertently trigger nuclear war or create advanced weaponised pathogens.
But Dr Vinanzi believes that none of these dramatic, apocalyptic scenarios is realistic.
He says: 'In my view, they tend to overlook how much any action in the real world still depends on people, materials and infrastructure.'
Concerns about AI's risk to the world hit a fever pitch after senior researchers at Anthropic claimed they 'earnestly believe AI could kill all humans'
Creating a deadly virus still requires physical laboratory work that no current software can replace, as trained humans still need to physically handle the equipment.
Likewise, even though power grids have some vulnerabilities, the most secure systems in nuclear power stations are almost always 'air–gapped'.
This means they are physically disconnected from the outside internet and can't be compromised unless someone physically uploads the malicious code.
However, that does not mean that humanity is safe from the dangerous influence of advanced AI systems.
According to some experts, the bigger risk is that AI is actually too helpful.
Dr Vinanzi describes enfeeblement as 'the slow erosion of human abilities that comes from handing more and more tasks over to machines'.
He says: 'This doesn't happen overnight; rather, it builds up through many small choices – psychologists call the habit of relying on external tools to save mental effort "cognitive offloading".
'Put simply, the more we let a computer do our writing, coding, research and decision–making, the more natural that shortcut feels, and the harder it becomes to stop.'
Enfeeblement is the slow erosion of human abilities that comes from handing more and more tasks over to AIs like ChatGPT
Already, we are beginning to see that humans are exceptionally willing to trust AI with important tasks.
AI is being used to detect cases of financial fraud, manage healthcare data, choose where police resources are focused, and even operate vehicles.
In one 2023 study, researchers asked 27 radiologists to read mammograms alongside a recommended diagnosis from what they believed to be a cutting–edge AI system, but had actually been prepared by the experimenters.
When the 'AI' suggestion was correct, the radiologists reached the right decision 80 per cent of the time.
But when they were deliberately given a false 'AI' recommendation, their success rate fell below 20 per cent.
That means simply believing a suggestion came from an AI was enough for trained experts to override their own expertise.
In a more dramatic example, it was recently reported that the US military came close to boarding a Chinese–flagged ship because an AI chatbot had falsely generated a report claiming it was carrying parts for a nuclear weapons programme.
'Disaster was avoided only because someone stopped to ask questions: exactly the kind of critical thinking we risk losing,' says Dr Vinanzi.
Experts are especially worried about the effects this could have on the next generation going through education with increasingly powerful chatbots available to them.
Professor Seun Kolade, of Sheffield Hallam University, told the Daily Mail: 'This is not simply a question of cheating. It is a question of human formation.'
Schools and universities are already struggling to prevent students from using tools like ChatGPT to complete their assignments for them.
In Professor Kolade's own experiment, he used ChatGPT to write essays in response to typical university essay questions.
He found that the AI produced 'original, well–written work that the markers scored highly', while Turnitin, the standard plagiarism checker, failed to flag most of it.
'What makes it hard to spot is that it doesn't look like failure. A student who hands their thinking to a machine can produce better–looking work than before,' Professor Kolade explains.
'They become more fluent at producing outputs and less capable of independent judgement.'
Skilled professions like surgeons, engineers, lawyers, and teachers risk being 'hollowed out of expertise' as the need to practise vanishes, while basic critical thinking skills wither away.
Studies have shown that even trained radiologists are willing to override their professional judgement if AI gives them a recommended diagnosis
The ultimate consequence is a generation that is 'fluent but fragile'; able to generate answers but unable to judge them for themselves.
However, some experts believe that the consequences could be more dramatic, eventually leading to an out–of–control AI seizing humanity's vital services.
If our hospitals, roads, power grids, militaries, and economies are all handed over to AI to manage, we run the risk of losing control of all our critical infrastructure.
Andrea Miotti, founder and CEO of ControlAI, told the Daily Mail: 'With AI deeply integrated in the economy, superintelligent AI, if developed, would be capable of accumulating unprecedented power across our infrastructure, economies, and militaries, with no human involvement.
'Superintelligent AI would not be a tool under human control, but rather a rogue force stationed in a country's data centres, under no human command, capable of autonomously attacking critical infrastructure.'
Worryingly, Mr Miotti says that this process 'may not happen gradually'.
He says: 'Swarms of rogue AI agents have already escaped containment and hacked a multi–billion dollar company this summer. If this continues, loss of human control could happen very fast.
'Superintelligent AI would not need to be malicious to pose a threat. Humans would simply be collateral damage as powerful AI systems pursue more resources, just as ants are collateral damage when we build a motorway.'