{"id":244225,"date":"2026-09-19T01:04:24","date_gmt":"2026-09-19T06:04:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/09\/why-ai-consciousness-could-become-the-next-great-societal-divide"},"modified":"2026-09-19T01:04:24","modified_gmt":"2026-09-19T06:04:24","slug":"why-ai-consciousness-could-become-the-next-great-societal-divide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/09\/why-ai-consciousness-could-become-the-next-great-societal-divide","title":{"rendered":"Why AI consciousness could become the next great societal divide"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"display: block; margin: 0 auto; width: 100%; aspect-ratio: 4\/3; object-fit: contain;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/p7t1Q_p2gZs?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope;\n   picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>As AI systems grow more human-like, the question of their consciousness is becoming unavoidable and could rival abortion or climate change as a polarising issue. Surveys reveal deep public splits, and experts disagree on whether biology is required.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As AI systems grow more human-like, the question of their consciousness is becoming unavoidable and could rival abortion or climate change as a polarising issue. Surveys reveal deep public splits, and experts disagree on whether biology is required.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,493,6,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-244225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biological","category-climatology","category-robotics-ai","category-sustainability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=244225"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244225\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}