Artificial intelligence researcher Cameron Berg chugged his drink when he spotted OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman at a party in 2024, and hustled over to ask the CEO whether he thought the emerging technology could be conscious or self-aware.
Few tech executives talked about the possibility in public at the time. But to Berg’s surprise, Altman said that OpenAI had started discussing how to detect consciousness in AI systems.
“It was very obviously something that he’s thought about,” said Berg, who has launched a nonprofit organization to work on methods to assess AI consciousness.
