A Staggering Number of Gen Z Think AI Is Already Conscious

Generation Z, or the cohort of people born between 1997 and 2012, has a very weird relationship with artificial intelligence. In the latest sign of just how strange things are getting, a new study by the paper-writing service EduBirdie found, upon asking 2,000 Gen Z-ers a battery of questions about AI, that a quarter believe the technology is "already conscious." What's more, 52 percent — or more than half of the respondents — think AI is not yet conscious but will become so in the years to come. Plus a whopping 58 percent of the Zoomers surveyed said they think the technology will "take over" the world, and 44 percent said they believe that takeover could happen within the next 20 years. Given those concerns, it's not that surprising that 69 percent of EduBirdie's survey respondents claimed they always say "please" and "thank you" to chatbots — a finding that jibes with TechRadar's late 2024 survey in which 67 percent of Americans and 71 percent of Brits polled said they are polite ... Read full article.