Stories about AI systems deceiving users, cooperating with one another or pursuing their own goals increasingly invite us to talk about them as if they had minds of their own. But do people really believe that AI is conscious? A new LMU study suggests that they draw a surprisingly sharp line between intelligent behavior and consciousness.

The study, recently published in the journal Cognition, was led by Dr. Louis Longin from LMU’s Chair of Philosophy of Mind together with his colleagues Dr. Bahador Bahrami, professor Ophelia Deroy and other collaborators.

“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 exactly the same way, under identical circumstances,” says Longin.