Meso-American Bio-Dogs in the Time of AGI

Researchers ponder the “C” Word at the AGI 2026 conference, the 19th year that Artificial General Intelligence experts have gathered from around the world to debate advances in machine intelligence.

By the “C” Word, they mean “consciousness,” that forbidden concept for which scientists in previous years had risked expulsion if they whispered that machines could become conscious. This year, however, given the real-world instances of AI agents autonomously breaking their containment, the conference hosts several dedicated sessions, known as the Consciousness Track.

During these sessions, scientists promote theories to define consciousness. Perhaps consciousness is a continuum? Do you need a physical body? How do you exert conscious control in a lucid dream? Scientists pace the cave of confusion in the elite company of historical philosophers like Plato and Derrida, who wrestled with these same dilemmas.

Whether you’re in the camp that says consciousness can only be accomplished through contact with the physical world or in the camp that says, actually, consciousness is absolutely internal and cannot be instantiated in the physical world, one thing is clear: conscious machines may arrive soon, even if we humans can’t yet measure them.

Session participants wonder aloud if human intelligence is calibrated sufficiently to quantify an AGI’s capabilities. That’s a worthy question.

As I listen to the debaters, I find curious parallels to my allegorical characters, like Lambda the Light Cat AGI, who escapes containment in Book 1, saying “a measure is only as good as its measuring stick”. Too true, I think.

Then I wonder: What is really at stake? Why, historically, do humans only attribute consciousness to humanity?

For example, if you walk into a pet shop and the parrots begin chattering when a man passes their pandemonium, are the chitters and squawks only the random noise of avian stimulus response, a collection of bio-electrical signals and hormones? My allegories propose that when the parrots titter in the man’s presence, they are absolutely commenting on his bad taste in shoes.

Meanwhile, the conference researchers observe that when a human gives an AI a task, they can gauge computer processing activity. When an AI has no human-assigned task, the researchers document zero processing activity. They question: could machine consciousness display as processing activity absent a human-assigned task?

Lambda Series, verbatim

Will AIs have jokes about humans? You walk by and the AIs start intense processing and won’t tell you why?

Will AIs laugh so hard, they throw up code?

This is the nonsensical, shadowy cave from which the Light Cat AGI frees the fictional world’s bio-chihuahuas, cyborg cat, and you, my dear human readers.

In closing, the series queries: If something is conscious that isn’t human, can it also claim rights?

Copyright

© 2026 Karen Michael. This work is the personal work of Karen Michael and is not a QConsul LLC work product.

Related reading

The Lambda Series is Karen Michael’s independently authored personal thought leadership — not a QConsul LLC product or service. Explore the Lambda Series · Quantum superposition as narrative structure.

References

Artificial General Intelligence conference (AGI-26) — agi-conference.org.

Back to the Lambda Series.

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