Integrated Information Theory Researchers on AI Consciousness

Integrated information theorists start from Giulio Tononi’s claim that consciousness is intrinsic causal power, quantified as phi, the amount of information a system generates above and beyond the sum of its parts. Christof Koch co-developed the framework with Tononi and has spent two decades mapping phi onto neural correlates of consciousness. The Cogitate Consortium, co-led by Liad Mudrik and Lucia Melloni, ran an adversarial collaboration testing this theory directly against global workspace theory, a rare case of two rival camps agreeing on a shared experimental protocol before running it. Melanie Boly, Larissa Albantakis and Matteo Grasso co-developed Integrated Information Theory 4.0, the framework’s current formal version.

The position has a sharp practical consequence for AI. Feedforward architectures, which describes most current large language models, generate close to zero integrated information regardless of their behavioural output, which rules out consciousness in exactly the systems attracting the most public attention. For the formal theory itself, see integrated information theory on the consciousness theories index; for the full researcher directory, see all consciousness researchers.

• Larissa Albantakis Integrated Information Theory 4.0 and dissociating intelligence from consciousness in artificial systems
• Bernard J. Baars Global Workspace Theory (GWT), cognitive architecture of conscious access, A Cognitive Theory of Consciousness (1988), In the Theater of Consciousness (1997)
• Adam B. Barrett Continuous field formulations of Integrated Information Theory, Measure-theoretic Phi, practical complexity measures, Granger causality
• Melanie Boly Co-developer of Integrated Information Theory 4.0 (IIT 4.0), Neural Correlates of Pure Presence, EEG/fMRI consciousness biomarkers, minimal phenomenal experience
• Matteo Grasso Integrated Information Theory 4.0 and the structural description of the quality of experience
• Andrew M. Haun Co-author of Integrated Information Theory 4.0 (IIT 4.0), visual psychophysics, spatial cause-effect structures, cortical grid geometries
• Erik Hoel Formal theory of Causal Emergence (macro over micro causation), The Overfitted Brain Hypothesis of Dreams, The World Behind the World (2023), The Kleiner-Hoel Dilemma
• Ryota Kanai Founder and CEO of ARAYA, Principal Bundle framework for consciousness, Information Generation Theory, Temporal Continuity Criterion for Machine Consciousness (JCS 2026)
• Christof Koch Neural correlates of consciousness and co-development of Integrated Information Theory
• Pedro Mediano Integrated Information Decomposition, and the revised non-negative measure of integrated information
• Lucia Melloni Lead of the Cogitate Consortium open science adversarial collaboration (IIT vs. GNW), President of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness (ASSC 2026)
• Liad Mudrik Adversarial collaboration methodology, high-level unconscious processing limits, neural basis of free will and conscious volition, Cogitate Consortium co-lead
• Robert Prentner Structuralist philosophy of mind, interface representation, Synthetic Level of Processing (SLP) tests, dual-aspect monism formalization
• Kallum Robinson Formal comparison of structural theories of consciousness using category theory
• Max Tegmark Perceptronium, and consciousness as a state of matter
• Giulio Tononi Integrated information theory and the quantity phi
• Naotsugu Tsuchiya Formal and mathematical approaches to the structure of conscious experience
• Rufin VanRullen Perceptual rhythms, Brain oscillations, Continuous vs. discrete temporal frames in visual consciousness, deep learning models of neural perception