The article surveys a growing scientific debate about whether bees, other animals, and AI systems could be conscious, highlighting ethical implications of expanding the realm of consciousness.

A Trends in Cognitive Sciences paper coauthored by Colin Klein proposes a structural, machinery-based set of indicators for consciousness in AI, emphasizing information processing and goal trade-offs.

In neuroscience for animals, a Philosophical Transactions B paper proposes a neural model for minimal consciousness in insects, aiming to identify core computations that could be shared across humans, invertebrates, and machines.

The overarching takeaway is that assessing consciousness is more informative when focusing on underlying processing mechanisms rather than outward actions, with ongoing possibilities for both animals and AI to exhibit or develop consciousness under future architectures.

Recent AI-focused work argues that judging consciousness should rely on the underlying information-processing machinery rather than surface behavior, concluding that current AI like ChatGPT is not conscious but could become so with different architectures.

A New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness (April 2024) advocates that consciousness may exist across many vertebrates and invertebrates, influencing ethical considerations and precautionary reasoning.