A new study suggests that people do not equate human-like AI behavior with human-like consciousness.
Artificial intelligence can respond to sounds, recognize emotions, adapt to its surroundings, and behave in ways that closely resemble human reactions. Yet people still hesitate to believe that such behavior reflects consciousness.
A new study from LMU finds that even when an AI system and a human behave in exactly the same way under identical circumstances, people judge the AI as less conscious. The distinction was much smaller when participants were asked about “awareness,” suggesting that the language used to describe artificial agents strongly influences how their mental abilities are perceived.
Human Behavior Does Not Equal Human Consciousness
The study, published in Cognition, was led by Dr. Louis Longin from LMU’s Chair of Philosophy of Mind together with Dr. Bahador Bahrami, Professor Ophelia Deroy, and other collaborators. The researchers wanted to separate judgments about behavior from judgments about consciousness.
“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.
The team recruited nearly 1,100 participants. Some read short scenarios involving artificial agents that varied in how strongly they responded to events around them, such as sounds or the emotional states of other individuals. Another group read the same scenarios with human protagonists. Participants then rated how conscious or aware they believed each protagonist was of its surroundings.
Responsiveness Raised Ratings, but a Gap Remained
For both humans and AI, greater responsiveness led to higher ratings of consciousness and awareness. An agent that reacted more strongly to its surroundings was generally judged as having a richer mental state.
But the pattern changed sharply when participants were asked specifically about consciousness. Even the most responsive AI was rated as less conscious than the least responsive human. Ratings of awareness showed a much smaller divide, with artificial and human agents judged far more similarly.
“There is a growing worry in public discussion that people will see AI behaving in a human-like way and start treating these systems as if they had human-like mental states,” says Longin, lead author of the study. “We found something much more nuanced: People are quite willing to say that an AI notices things and is aware of its surroundings. But they clearly draw a line when it comes to the term ‘consciousness’. People consistently attribute less consciousness to AI than humans – even when their behavior is identical.”
Why the Word “Awareness” Changes the Picture
The difference may reflect how people interpret the terms themselves. “Awareness” can describe an agent detecting and responding to information in its environment, while “consciousness” often carries a stronger implication of subjective experience.
“We may be using mental terms to refer to AI, but this may only be because we lack better words,” says Ophelia Deroy, philosopher and a senior author of the study. “After all, AI is trained to act and speak like a human, so these descriptions seem natural.”
The results suggest that people judge AI differently depending on whether they are considering observable awareness or subjective consciousness.
Language Could Shape How AI Is Perceived
That distinction matters because terms like “aware,” “conscious,” or “intentional” can imply very different things about an AI system’s mental state.
“Our study teaches us lessons for how we communicate about AI,” says Bahador Bahrami, who is also a senior author of the study and an expert in social neuroscience. “Companies and journalists often reach for hyped descriptions of AI models, and credit them with intentions, plans, or even moral conscience and hesitation. What our study shows is that everyday judgments are much more discriminating: People do not simply put AI and humans on the same mental scale. But the boundary also depends on which terms we use. For more neutral descriptors such as ‘awareness’, the distinction can largely disappear. That makes our choice of language important.”
Reference: “AI is not as conscious as humans: Essentialism in mental state attributions to artificial systems” by Louis Longin, Jurgis Karpus, Nadine Meertens, Bahador Bahrami and Ophelia Deroy, 1 October 2026, Cognition.
DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2026.106733
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