Contributor(s): | Could artificial intelligence already be conscious? Are today’s AI systems truly aware — or are we just projecting human qualities onto machines? We speak to Professor Jonathan Birch to explore the science and ethics of AI sentience. As machine learning systems like ChatGPT become more advanced, questions about consciousness in AI are becoming impossible to ignore. From unexplained emergent behaviours to the possibility of strange new forms of awareness, could we be facing a moral blind spot?