A meeting room is not a philosophy seminar, which is fortunate, because most companies would not survive one. A manager asks an AI system to analyze a contract, debug a workflow, compare vendors, or draft a risk memo. The system pauses, breaks the task into steps, checks an assumption, rejects one path, and returns a structured answer. Someone in the room says: “But it does not really understand.” ...
The problem is not that people disagree about AI consciousness Boardrooms are quite good at turning philosophical uncertainty into bad policy. Give them a vague enough question—“Could AI become conscious?”—and the room quickly sorts itself into familiar roles. The technologist says “not yet.” The lawyer says “define conscious.” The ethicist says “we should not assume absence.” The product lead wonders whether any of this affects the launch calendar. Someone mentions sentience. Someone else mentions ChatGPT saying it has feelings. The meeting is now officially useless. ...