Google DeepMind Paper Argues LLMs Will Never Be Conscious

· Apr 27, 2026 at 9:54 AM

Philosophers said the paper’s argument is sound, but that “all these arguments have been presented years and years ago.”

Google DeepMind Paper Argues LLMs Will Never Be Conscious — Photo by Mitchell Luo / Unsplash

A senior staff scientist at Google’s artificial intelligence laboratory DeepMind, Alexander Lerchner, argues in a new paper that no AI or other computational system will ever become conscious. That conclusion appears to conflict with the narrative from AI company CEOs, including DeepMind’s own Demis Hassabis, who repeatedly talks about the advent of artificial general intelligence. Hassabis recently claimed AGI is “going to be something like 10 times the impact of the Industrial Revolution, but happening at 10 times the speed.”