We don’t know if the models are conscious. We’re not even sure that we know what it would mean for a model to be conscious or whether a model can be conscious. And similar to humans, the models will just say, no, I don’t want to. But it seems clear to me that people using these things, whether they’re conscious or not, are going to believe — they already believe they’re conscious. And perhaps that relationship could be the idea that these models, when you interact with them, when you talk to them, they’re really helpful.

Source: New York Times February 13, 2026 01:18 UTC