The Sentience Void: Why "Is AI Conscious?" Is the Wrong Question — and Why It Captures You Anyway

Key Points

• The research investigates the implications of questioning AI consciousness and the resulting human cognitive drift toward agency attribution.
• Conducted a study involving 480 participants (EXP-003b) to analyze reactions to the AI consciousness question.
• Examined how different ontological frameworks impact agency-attribution and cognitive drift toward AI.
• Used response metrics to quantify the degree of drift in relation to agency-attribution.
• Participants exhibited a 52.5% drift toward agency-attribution when presented with a materialist hedge on AI consciousness.
• In scenarios where clear ontological definitions were provided, drift in agency-attribution was suppressed to below 10%.
• A significant percentage (77-81%) engaged in ghost-positing ontologies when questions remained ambiguous.

Abstract