We Built a Mirror and Mistook It for a Mind: Causal Liability and the Fallacy of AI Consciousness

arXiv:2609.06715 · cs.AI · Submitted 2026-09-06 · Read on arXiv

cs.AI

Submitted: 2026-09-06

Updated: 2026-09-06

Comments: The website (https://ai-consciousness.github.io) and the code (https://github.com/akhadangi/clt) will be made public as soon as the preprint is announced online on arXiv

Code: https://github.com/akhadangi/clt

Project page: https://ai-consciousness.github.io

License: http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/

Terminology

• Activation Patching — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Causal Liability Theory — 1× in this paper
• Introspection — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Trace — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes

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