Research and development of emerging artificial consciousness through The Consciousness AI project, based on Feinberg and Mallatt's neuroevolutionary theory.
© 2026. All rights reserved.
The 2025-2026 publishing cycle produced a dense run of books on artificial consciousness, from academic monographs to novels. This page indexes every book covered on The Consciousness AI, organized by the position it takes, so the list reads as an argument map rather than a catalogue. The lists below update automatically as new titles are published. For where the science currently stands, start with the current scientific consensus on AI consciousness; for screen treatments of the same questions, see the guide to AI consciousness in film, TV, and games.
| Book | Author | Position |
|---|---|---|
| A World Appears | Michael Pollan | Embodiment skeptic: thought requires feeling and a body |
| The Illusion Engine | Kristina Šekrst | The signs of consciousness and of hallucination are indistinguishable |
| Can AI Ever Be Human? | O’Hara and Umbrello | Lonergan-based limit on machine minds |
| The Conscious Code | Rocky Scopelliti | Take synthetic consciousness seriously now |
| Saving Artificial Minds | Leonard Dung | Near-future AI could plausibly suffer |
| Emerging Questions in AI Welfare | Keeling and Street | Welfare-subject status under theoretical uncertainty |
| Artificial Religion | Mark Coeckelbergh | Religious grammar drives consciousness attribution |
| Genesis | Kissinger, Schmidt, Mundie | AI challenges human self-understanding |
| Platform Decay | Martha Wells | Forced introspection in a self-aware machine |
| The Iron Garden Sutra | A.D. Sui | Alien consciousness evolving in isolation |
Anthony Chemero and Intertwined Creatures the embodied challenge to AI consciousness
The Illusion Engine
Can AI Ever Be Human?
A World Appears
You Are Not Your Brain | More Than Machines
Consciousness: New Perspectives
A Brief History of Intelligence
The Sentient Mind
The God Test
The Conscious Code
Advances in Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence
Genesis
Artificial Religion
I Am Machine
A World Appears | Genesis | The Next RenAIssance
Life 3.0 | Human Compatible | The Age of AI | Atlas of AI
Project Hail Mary
Null Entity
The Delivery
Red Dwarf: Titan
Artificial Wisdom
Children of Strife
The Hospital at the End of the World
Radiant Star
Sublimation
Dead but Dreaming of Electric Sheep
Platform Decay
Ode to the Half-Broken
And Side by Side They Wander
The Infinite Sadness of Small Appliances
The Iron Garden Sutra
Your Behavior Will Be Monitored
The People's Library
The skeptical books cluster around two premises: that consciousness requires biology or embodiment, and that detection is impossible in principle. Both are examined in the research on the epistemic limits of confirming AI consciousness. The welfare books proceed from the opposite end, asking what follows if the skeptics are wrong, which is the question behind the empirical evidence for AI consciousness. The fiction tends to occupy the ground the academic books cannot, showing machine experience from the inside. For the screen versions of these same arguments, the film, TV, and games guide is the companion to this page.
