AI Conferences

This is the poster I designed for Dr. Pietro Perconti’s talk, “Consciousness as a Social Technology: AI as an Acid Test.” This talk proposes a social theory of consciousness by framing self-consciousness as a “social technology,” a structured set of practices, norms, and tools that stabilize human interaction, much like money, law, or writing. Generative AI makes this perspective especially relevant as it operates through language-based inferential patterns. Since language is social through and through, artificial systems that operate through language inherit part of its social and attributive structure. AI systems increasingly enter communicative, institutional, and affective environments in which mental states are attributed, interpreted, and negotiated. The question is therefore not only whether AI systems are conscious, but also how they participate in the social technologies through which consciousness itself is recognized.