“What Capable Agents Must Know: Why AI Consciousness May Be an Inevitable Byproduct of Capability” by Aran Nayebi

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Recorded30 Jun 2026

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[No LLMs were used (or harmed!) in the writing of this blogpost!] Technical results can all be found here: https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.02491 This work, and this post about this work, was borne out of a frustration. The frustration first emerged over a year ago when I was at a Dave & Buster's for the first time in years (for an annual ML department event, no less!), surrounded by flashing lights and NPC agents, not being able to objectively rule out that they were conscious or not, even though I strongly felt these particular programmed agents weren’t. I wasn’t particularly interested in playing the games there, as I mainly sat in confusion the whole time watching the various games running about around me… So, given my background in NeuroAI (though I prefer the term "natural science of intelligence" but "NeuroAI" is apparently catchier!) and wanting to make claims about the mind and brain quantitative, I set about trying to design empirical tests for leading theories of consciousness (e.g. global workspaces) that one could falsify in human brains (which we agree are consciousness!), as well as potentially corroborate general signatures of in animal brains, and possibly LLMs, where we have self-report and direct [...] ---Outline:(04:06) Arrow 1: What Capable Agents Must Know(12:41) Arrow 2: What, if anything, might this have to do with the AI Consciousness?(17:40) On "Functionalism"(22:01) Acknowledgements: --- First published: June 30th, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/SD9jayFvEctW82Duk/what-capable-agents-must-know-why-ai-consciousness-may-be-an-2 --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

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