Iulia Comsa
Google DeepMind
Functionalist What matters is the organisation of the processing, not the material
Position on AI consciousness
Comsa's co-authorship of the 2026 framework reflects the position that consciousness assessment should be an explicit probabilistic computation over functional levels rather than a verdict issued from one theory.
Iulia Comsa is a researcher at Google DeepMind and one of the fourteen co-authors of From Cacophony to Hierarchy, the 150 page framework published on arXiv in September 2026 that reorganises AI consciousness assessment around five supervening levels of functional description. The framework takes indicator evidence with likelihood ratios, combines it with explicit credences over the levels, and returns an aggregated probability instead of a verdict.
Her position within the collaboration is part of the framework’s own, which the site’s taxonomy places in the functionalist family. The single methodological commitment is that experience supervenes on a system’s organisation, with substrate-dependent views such as biological naturalism and quantum theories carried as cross-cutting realisability constraints rather than as additional levels. The framework’s treatment of theory disagreement as an input rather than an obstacle is the position all fourteen co-authors share by signing the paper.
Known for. Co-author of the cacophony assessment framework for AI consciousness
Coverage on this site
Related researchers
- Shamil ChandariaGoogle DeepMind Institute; University of Oxford; Max Planck UCL Centre for Computational PsychiatryFree energy principle and active inference, the Beautiful Loop theory, the Complex Brain Hypothesis, lead author of the From Cacophony to Hierarchy AI consciousness assessment framework
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Anil SethSussex Centre for Consciousness Science, University of SussexThe beast machine hypothesis, and controlled hallucination as an account of perception
- Fernando E. RosasUniversity of Sussex, Imperial College London, University of Oxford, and PIBBSSCorresponding author of the BBS commentary on compatibilist emergence
- Murray ShanahanImperial College LondonGlobal workspace style cognitive architectures, Embodiment and the Inner Life, indicator properties for AI consciousness, LLM world models
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Chris FrithUniversity College LondonAgency and the sense of self, Making Up the Mind, metacognition and awareness, indicator properties collaboration
- Morten KringelbachDepartment of Psychiatry, University of Oxford; Centre for Eudaimonia and Human Flourishing, Linacre College, Oxford; Department of Clinical Medicine, Aarhus UniversityWhole-brain computational modeling of non-equilibrium brain dynamics, the thermodynamics of mind framework, hedonic and pleasure circuitry
Iulia Comsa is listed with the other functionalists and computationalists, who hold that what matters is the organisation of the processing, not the material. The theory family behind that position is set out in the index of consciousness theories. Every researcher covered on this site is indexed in the directory of consciousness researchers.