We asked 100 AI researchers at EMNLP whether AI could be conscious, how they define consciousness, and how they engage with it

Before reading this post, please take 30 seconds to answer the 3-question survey yourself: [ survey link ] Introduction The possibility of AI consciousness, the use of AI for companionship or emotional support, and the trust we place in AI as coding tools raise personal interrogatives for most AI researchers, but these topics are often relegated to informal conversations. Apart from the few who write about it, it’s hard to get a sense of how much AI has permeated researchers’ personal lives, and how they feel about it. To gain a better understanding of this, we ran a quick, informal three-question survey, plus an optional fourth, open-ended question. We spoke to 107 EMNLP 2026 attendees in Budapest. 79 respondents were randomly-met researchers, collected during the opening reception and during the conference breaks. We also asked the same questions to 28 people working at industry booths, mostly recruiters and software engineers. The two groups gave quite different answers, with the industry group being way more willing to entertain the possibility of AI consciousness. Additionally, we also asked a variation of the same questions to 21 LLMs, including both self-hosted and closed so