Many Ways of Being Minded

This chapter examines the burgeoning field of artificial intelligence consciousness assessment through the lens of critical disability studies and neurodiversity. It argues that many proposed tests for machine consciousness tacitly rely on a narrow set of neurotypical and non-disabled norms, creating a risk of “epistemic ableism” where atypical expressions of mind are unrecognised or ignored. By analysing clinical cases such as disorders of consciousness and neurodivergent cognitive profiles, the chapter illustrates how internal experience can exist independently of standardised communicative or motor behaviours. Readers are presented with a methodological framework for pluralising consciousness markers and building “anti-ableist” assessment regimes that accommodate heterogeneity in expression. The chapter concludes by offering foundational principles for a diversity-informed research agenda. These principles aim to ensure that future frameworks for artificial intelligence rights and moral status are ethically robust and do not replicate historical patterns of exclusion.