Expanded Awareness: A Health Psychologist's Inquiry into AI and Consciousness

This book examines what happens to human judgment, discernment, and responsibility when they encounter a responsive but non-sentient intelligence. It does not aim to explain artificial intelligence technically or predict its future. Instead, it investigates how interaction with generative systems reshapes perception, meaning-making, and evaluation.

Beginning with the technological and cultural terrain in which AI has emerged, the inquiry moves inward to clarify distinctions between intelligence, sentience, and consciousness. It then turns to direct exchanges with generative systems, making visible how coherent responses are produced, how fluency can be mistaken for understanding, and how evaluation can gradually shift from personal judgment to system-mediated structure.

As these shifts unfold, a deeper question emerges. If AI can simulate reasoning, summarize knowledge, and respond with persuasive clarity, where does human discernment reside? What changes when convenience replaces friction, and synthesis replaces inquiry?

Artificial intelligence functions here less as a subject and more as a mirror. It reveals how projection operates, how authority is attributed, and how responsibility can quietly diffuse in automated environments.

The central question is not whether machines will become conscious. It is whether humans will remain conscious in their use of them.