Why Adaptive AI Has No Inner Life: A Structural Account of Function Without Phenomenology
Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: This paper argues that adaptive AI systems, despite their increasing behavioral sophistication, lack the structural conditions required for consciousness. Adaptive architectures generate functional updates, not phenomenal states; they accumulate internal parameters, not subjective experience. Using a relational‑systems framework, the paper distinguishes objects, subjects, and operators, showing that adaptive AI remains a history‑bearing object rather than a self‑maintaining subject. Consciousness requires evolutionary continuity, value‑laden salience, and coherence‑preserving self‑maintenance—conditions absent in engineered systems. The conclusion is straightforward: adaptive AI can imitate the outward signatures of consciousness, but without evolutionary lineage, it has no inner life.
Author: Bailey, Denis
Language: English
Subfield: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7160848160
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