Larissa Albantakis
University of Wisconsin-Madison, Center for Sleep and Consciousness
Integrated information Consciousness is intrinsic causal power, measured as integrated information
Larissa Albantakis is a researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Center for Sleep and Consciousness and a co-author of Integrated Information Theory 4.0, the formal statement of IIT built from axioms about the essential properties of experience. Her research applies IIT’s mathematics to concrete computational systems, using deliberately simple models to make the theory’s abstract claims testable rather than purely philosophical.
With Graham Findlay, William Marshall, Isaac David, William Mayner, Christof Koch, and Giulio Tononi, Albantakis argued that an artificial system can be functionally indistinguishable from a human, producing the same outputs for the same inputs, while having a radically different degree of integrated information, including close to zero. Her 2026 book chapter, “On the utility of toy models for theories of consciousness,” extends this project methodologically, showing how highly simplified systems can be used to test and compare the assumptions behind Integrated Information Theory and Global Workspace Theory directly, sharpening the distinction between functional and structural theories and probing features of experience such as spatial extendedness and temporal flow.
Albantakis’s consistent position is that intelligence and consciousness are separate axes that current AI evaluation methods routinely conflate. A toy model that behaves intelligently within a narrow task can be built with a causal structure carrying almost no integrated information, which under IIT means the model has almost no experience regardless of its competence.
Known for. Integrated Information Theory 4.0 and dissociating intelligence from consciousness in artificial systems
Coverage on this site
- Larissa Albantakis and Toy Models for Testing Theories of Consciousness August 2026
- The Tononi Lab and the Phi Structure at the Centre of IIT 4.0 August 2026
Related researchers
- Giulio TononiUniversity of Wisconsin-MadisonIntegrated information theory and the quantity phi
- Andrew M. HaunDepartment of Psychiatry, University of Wisconsin-MadisonCo-author of Integrated Information Theory 4.0 (IIT 4.0), visual psychophysics, spatial cause-effect structures, cortical grid geometries
- Costas AnastassiouAllen InstituteEphaptic coupling of cortical neurons, endogenous electric fields as causal participants in neural activity, extracellular field biophysics
- Anton ArkhipovAllen Institute for Brain ScienceLarge-scale neural simulation, biophysically detailed cortical models, AIBRAIN program, State of Brain Emulation Report 2025
- Bernard J. BaarsThe Neurosciences InstituteGlobal Workspace Theory (GWT), cognitive architecture of conscious access, A Cognitive Theory of Consciousness (1988), In the Theater of Consciousness (1997)
- Adam B. BarrettSussex Centre for Consciousness Science, University of SussexContinuous field formulations of Integrated Information Theory, Measure-theoretic Phi, practical complexity measures, Granger causality
Larissa Albantakis is listed with the other integrated information theorists, who hold that consciousness is intrinsic causal power, measured as integrated information. 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.