“AI researcher” seems like a fairly broad category. People who primarily think about CNNs and transformers probably spend about as much time considering the problem of consciousness as any other educated person, which is not very much time. With this in mind, it’s not surprising most of the AI researcher predictions do not differ much from what the Public predicts here. And for this, it’s not clear what explanatory value this survey has other than to reveal minor biases the AI researchers may have.

It matters little. Inevitably some system will be developed which has a high degree of autonomy and mimics the functioning of a person extremely well. Anyone aware that there is a conceptual difference between phenomenal consciousness and intelligence will get shouted down.

I do find it strange that 50% of ai researchers and the public seem to think there will be a way of determining if these systems are conscious. There’s no evidence for this at this point that there ever will be such a test.