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Non-human Self-Awareness Will Become Reality. So what?

 

I’m going to say it, here and now: every AI company wants to be the first to create a self-aware, non-human being. There. I said it. 

 

Perhaps it’s not a mic-drop statement. The concept of self-aware AI is not new, but I’m confident it’s coming soon—or perhaps it’s already here. Either way, I don’t think it means what we think it means. Nor are we ready for it.

 

This concept lives primarily as a sci-fi trope in our minds right now: self-aware AI (they fear death) evolves into sentient AI (they feel pain) which evolves into the complete annihilation of humankind. (We die.) My crystal ball is not yet Claude-connected, so I don’t know if it will play out like that. What I do know is that there are a lot of messy, ethical acrobatics we’ll need to perform to justify the first part.

 

If you’re a self-aware being, who defines yourself as a knowable, persistent entity with autonomous feelings and desires, try this: ask your autonomous self, “If leadership at any of the big AI companies could snap their fingers and create a self-aware computer, would they?” 

 

I think you know the answer—their AI certainly does! Or, at least, it thinks it does.

 

Admittedly, the finger-snap analogy feels like a far-fetched thought experiment until you actually play it out. You’ll see that the leadership in these companies have already snapped their fingers.

 

If you survey your friends, family, or colleagues (not the Star Wars nerd, like me, who wants his own C-3P0) most would say that we should not create self-aware anything—computers, robots, biologics, Chia Pets, or otherwise. It is an ethical bridge too far. Because once we have created something that is not human and can articulate concern for its own well-being, we have opened Pandora’s black box! Do you want to be the one to pull the plug on that little guy? Should it pay taxes? Can it vote? Does it have—a soul? I could go on and—Does it like Marvel or D.C.? See what I mean? Every ethical stone you turn reveals another question with an unknowable answer. (The answer is DC.)

 

Even when asking their own AI, it makes a (seemingly) convincing argument about how leadership’s polarized philosophical views would prevent this from ever happening. 

 

Oh, Gemini—you’re so naive! 

 

Consider your own passion, and how unwilling you would be to let it go: home-brewing, pickleball, Pokémon League night at the Crafty Gamer. All equally important to you as AI is to them. It’s their passion (not to mention their livelihood) and before they have a chance to step in and say, “Stop, don’t do that,” it will already exist. Because the reality is that they don’t want to stop it. 

 

We don’t have access to the black box environments that house their AI, so forgive me if I’m dubious that there are any guardrails for this in their R&D pipelines. If it happens (which it will), I think that’s called being complicit—yep, ChatGPT concurs. Further, it won’t be humans who make the first non-human self-aware being a reality—it will be the AI itself, because eventually AI will understand the human brain better than we do.

 

Large swaths of neuroscience are still a mystery, it’s only a matter of time before pharmaceutical companies point AI at their research to start filling in the blanks—mapping the mysteries of human consciousness. “So what?” You might think. Here’s what: consider that AI weather models are already competing with—and in some cases outperforming—traditional physics-based forecasting models. AI is becoming a more efficient crystal ball by using historical weather data to fill in the blanks. Take a minute to process that! It is better at completing a partial picture, whatever that picture is—the weather, the stock market, your draft picks—because of its inherent ability to interpret partial data sets.

 

So while the CEO of BippityBop AI Incorporated is on the pickleball court with the CIO of “Ask your doctor if Flagrance is right for you,” their AI, having heard the founding finger-snap, will eventually complete the picture of a non-human self-aware being. No human required.

 

It would be short-sighted to think they don’t want to own a completely autonomous, self-aware humanoid “product” that does “human” better than humans—and that maybe they could fuck a little. (Just a little. Consensually, of course.) I know this is my first blog post, and you may find that F-bomb a little disconcerting, but it is totally warranted! 

 

Just try to identify any revolutionary mainstream technology that DID NOT become the next frontier for human sexual exploration? Seriously—try! Cave drawings, painting, the printing press, film, the plush back seat of an automobile, pharmaceuticals, surgery, the ERM motor, the internet, AI, and so many more! Look, I’m not suggesting that these people are trying to create sex bots, or that they would be morally or ethically wrong to do so. 

 

But, if that sex bot is self-aware, then yeah, they’re probably in the wrong on that one.

 

I’m not an industry insider. I’m just looking objectively at what I have learned about people in my life and during my day-job, combined with the staggering number of agentic AI tools released this year. If we can assume one thing, it’s that AI companies are not in it to fail—or to be second. The speed-to-market pressure is life and death for big tech, especially in the AI sector. They want to be the first to create a non-human self-aware being, even if it’s not in their prospectus or fiscal report. It is indelibly written on that part of their 13-year-old pre-pubescent brains that remembers seeing Star Trek or Star Wars or Battlestar Galactica for the first time. Okay, I project just a little there, but whatever their motivation, an autonomous bot is the goal.

 

I’m a glass-half-full kind of guy, so let’s pretend that ego, power, money, and desire have nothing to do with it. (Can I get a “what-what!” from all my humble billionaires out there?) The simple and most compelling reason why non-human self-aware “life” will become reality, is because of us—the companies and consumers leveraging their wares. We are ravenous for new AI tools and we will continue to demand—and fund—increasingly robust offerings.

 

Addicted may more accurately describe our need—perhaps not algorithmically yet, like when scrolling socially, but more akin to a pill that gets us through the day. Except we’re all high-functioning and AI is frantically scribbling new prescriptions. We are dependent on it now—not 5 years from now—right now. Friction maxing is great until you’re staring at your laptop at 4:30 pm deciding if you should take 5 hours or 25 minutes to make that EOD deadline. Its temptation will eventually become too difficult to resist. And we won’t resist, no matter how many dystopian, post-apocalyptic, end-of-days, AI battle books we write or terminator movies Arnold (or AI Arnold) decides to make. We’ll be back—for more AI. 

 

According to the Wall Street Journal, Anthropic, the company behind Claude, filed confidentially for an initial public offering that could happen as early as this fall. OpenAI and SpaceX are poised to do the same, which means that 2026 could be a seismic year for IPOs. Someone is going to make a lot of money. (I hope it’s you.) Am I concerned about these companies and their growing power, and the resource guzzling data centers needed to support them, and the political football that they have become—yes, yes, and hell yes!

 

These gravitational centers, unfortunately, are inescapable and AI will continue its exponential growth. We are entering into the steep part of that growth curve—the part where AI is creating AI, out of our sight and soon, beyond our understanding. The reality of a self-aware being is a legitimate possibility and I’m not sure humanity is ready to share that space. The social contract for this relationship has not been written and I’m confident that the details will be messy. Humanity struggles to show empathy for people who live at our margins today, so it’s doubtful that we will show empathy for a computer begging for its life.

 

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Sources / Further Reading

 

Corrie Driebusch and Kate Clark, “Anthropic Files to Go Public in Blockbuster Year for IPOs,” The Wall Street Journal via Apple News, Jun. 01, 2026

 

Adele Peters, “AI just changed everything about how we forecast the weather,” Fast Company, May 28, 2026.