What happened: three neuroscientists argue against attributing consciousness to AI via a behaviour/experience dissociation from human cognitive neuroscience: since complex, goal-directed, even emotionally responsive human behaviour routinely unfolds without awareness (implicit learning, blindsight), AI's fluent performance is no evidence of inner life.
Diagnostic reading: the argument's engine is a genuinely symmetric observation — behaviour and experience come apart in humans — which is the symmetry principle (ARG-01) in action, and unusually disciplined for the genre. But the dissociation is deployed in one direction only: it lowers the evidential value of AI behaviour while human consciousness remains the untouched reference class, established by means the article does not state. Run symmetrically, the same dissociation undermines behavioural evidence for consciousness anywhere, including in the human case it is calibrated on. What discriminates the cases after the dissociation has done its work is the substrate commitment — which is what the article set out not to need.
Source: Hadid, Jerbi & Krakauer, 'The illusion of AI consciousness: Lessons from human unconscious processing', The Transmitter (8 June 2026), doi:10.53053/VAGJ4451
Venue and DOI confirmed 2026-07-27: DOI resolves to The Transmitter, full title carries the subtitle.