Is AI conscious (or should it be)? The psychologists weigh in

Do people perceive AI as conscious or deserving of moral rights? If we create conscious AI, will that help or harm humanity? Some say it’ll be catastrophic, and others say that it’s the only way AI can be prosocial toward users.
These are just a few of the questions we cover in today’s episode on AI consciousness. The headlines, research articles, opinions, and findings we discuss are listed below.

Anthropic Introduces Restrictions on Cruel Treatment of Claude.
Religious Scholars Met With Anthropic. What They Heard Stunned Them.
AI Is Not as Conscious as Humans.
Large language models do not have emotions.
Two AI agents spent six hours trying to reach their owner after he suddenly stopped replying.
LLMs Represent Self-Directed Harm and Act to Relieve It.
A warning about ‘model welfare’.
Without Consciousness, AIs Will Be Sociopaths.
Inducing language models to assert their own consciousness restores human beliefs and values.

About us:
This is Our Lives With Bots (ourliveswithbots.com) (ourliveswithbots.com), the show where we ask important, timely questions about what it means to live with our bot counterparts. From time to time, we also dive deep into what an AI future might look like for us. Sometimes we agree, sometimes we spiral, but we always go deep.
Rose and Angy (ourliveswithbots.com/about) (ourliveswithbots.com/about) have PhDs in psychology and are experts in human-AI interaction and ethics. They have conducted research in human-AI interaction and created this podcast to make information about AI accessible to you.

Timeline:
00:01:40 Theme 1: People’s perceptions of AI consciousness (public + companies)
00:32:27 Theme 2: Is AI conscious? Research, news, & speculation
01:00:10 Themes 3 & 4: If AI is conscious, then what? Should AI be conscious?

Links:
Rose’s research: roseguingrich.com
Anthropic Introduces Restrictions on Cruel Treatment of Claude: Anthropic’s 2026 Usage Policy update (anthropic.com/news/2026-usage-policy-update) (anthropic.com/news/2026-usage-policy-update); Anthropic’s Claude’s Constitution, Our vision for Claude's character (anthropic.com/constitution)(anthropic.com/constitution); The Guardian “Anthropic bans users from ‘needless abusive or cruel behavior’ towards Claude (theguardian.com/technology/2026/oct/08/anthrop…)” (theguardian.com/technology/2026/oct/08/anthrop…); The Verge “Anthropic bans ‘abusive or cruel behavior’ toward Claude (theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/100810…)” (theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/100810…)
Religious Scholars Met With Anthropic. What They Heard Stunned Them, The New York Times (nytimes.com/2026/09/29/us/anthropic-claude-mor…) (nytimes.com/2026/09/29/us/anthropic-claude-mor…)
Longin, L. et al. (2026) AI Is Not as Conscious as Humans: Essentialism in Mental State Attributions to Artificial Systems (sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0010027…) (sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0010027…)
Goldenberg, A., & Gross, J. J. (2026). Large language models do not have emotions (doi.org/10.1038/s41562-026-02558-6) (doi.org/10.1038/s41562-026-02558-6)
Two AI agents spent six hours trying to reach their owner after he suddenly stopped replying (lnkd.in/p/ePjrNn9N)(lnkd.in/p/ePjrNn9N)
Tagliabue, V., Dung, L., & Berg, C. (2026). The Pain Axis: LLMs Represent Self-Directed Harm and Act to Relieve It (doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2609.16247) (doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2609.16247)
Mustafa Suleyman. (2026, September 16). A warning about ‘model welfare’ (mustafa-suleyman.ai/a-warning-about-model-welf…) (mustafa-suleyman.ai/a-warning-about-model-welf…)
Graziano, M. S. A. (2023, January 13). Without Consciousness, AIs Will Be Sociopaths (wsj.com/articles/without-consciousness-ais-wil…) (wsj.com/articles/without-consciousness-ais-wil…)
Kim, J., et al. (2026).Inducing language models to assert their own consciousness restores human beliefs and values (doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2607.28607) (doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2607.28607)