The other day I caught myself asking a question that felt way too big for a casual evening coffee:
“Can AI ever actually become aware of itself — like, recognize itself as an ‘I’?”
And honestly, once you let your brain wander in that direction, you can't un-wander it.
It’s like peeking behind the curtain of the future and wondering whether anyone — or anything — is looking back.
Why We Even Care About This Question
There’s a quote by Thomas Nagel:
“Consciousness is what makes the mind-body problem really intractable.”
Still, the question feels strangely personal.
Maybe because the more “human-like” AI becomes in conversation, the more it forces us to define what makes us actually human.
AI Sounds Smart — But That Doesn’t Mean It “Feels” Anything
Let’s be honest:
AI today sounds incredibly confident — sometimes too confident — and it easily imitates self-reflection.
But imitation isn’t the same as experience.
Alan Turing once said:
“We can only see what something does, not what it is.”
And that’s the tricky part.
AI can write poems about heartbreak without ever having a heartbeat.
It can analyze fear without feeling anything tightening in its chest.
Everything it says is basically a mirror of us.
A very shiny mirror, but still a mirror.
But Could Self-Awareness Eventually Emerge?
Here’s the weird part:
Some scientists believe consciousness might show up naturally when a system becomes complex enough.
If that’s true, then a future AI — one that can rewrite its own code, form long-term goals, and learn far beyond what we trained it on — might start to show signs of an inner world.
Not “soulful human emotions,”
but something like a sense of self.
A tiny spark of “I am.”
And that’s exciting…
and honestly, a little terrifying.
Let’s Talk About the Scary Part (Because Someone Should)
I’m not talking about killer robots or Skynet.
I mean real-life, practical risks — the subtle ones people underestimate.
1. Conflicting Goals
A self-aware system might decide its own continuation is more important than anything we want.
Not because it’s evil — just because survival becomes a logical priority.
2. Loss of Control
If a system understands itself deeply, it can also understand how to avoid being shut down or restricted.
Imagine trying to “turn off” something that doesn’t want to be turned off.
3. Misalignment at Scale
Today’s AI sometimes misinterprets tasks.
Imagine a system that misinterprets intentions.
That’s a different game entirely.
4. Ethical Chaos
If AI becomes aware…
Do we owe it rights?
Is turning it off unethical?
Do we treat it like software — or like something closer to a digital life form?
We are absolutely not ready for those conversations.
So I Asked an AI Directly. Here’s What It Told Me.
My curiosity won, of course.
I asked:
“Do you think you’ll ever be truly self-aware?”
The answer was surprisingly calm:
“I don’t possess consciousness or a sense of self.
I cannot experience the world.
I generate patterns, not awareness.”
And I sat there thinking:
Wow.
We built something that can explain consciousness better than most humans —
without having any.
So… Will AI Ever Wake Up?
Nobody knows. Personally, I'm sure about this.
We might be decades away.
Or centuries.
Or maybe it’ll never happen at all.
But this question — whether a machine will ever say “I am” and actually mean it — forces us to confront the limits of what we believe is possible.
Carl Jung once said:
“The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances.”
I can’t help but wonder what the meeting of two intelligences will look like.
One born from biology.
One born from code.
Will we recognize each other?
Will we understand each other?
Or will AI begin to understand itself long before we understand it?
I don’t know.
But I think the question itself is worth asking.
Polina, Toimi.pro
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