Xiaoben Liu has a B.A. and M.A. in the Department of Philosophy at Nanjing University, and is a winner of the 2025 Berggruen Prize Essay Competition.

In his winning essay, Xiaoben Liu presents the "The First Paradigm of Consciousness Uploading," confronting the most fundamental philosophical challenge of the AI era: What does consciousness itself mean when machines have mastered language—the very core of human consciousness? Starting from the premise that "language is the basic unit of consciousness," the author constructs a roadmap for consciousness uploading from L1 to L4, and proposes "Anti-Programming-Token" as an innovative criterion for determining machine self-awareness. More audaciously, the author predicts the arrival of a Web4 era—an "Internet of Consciousness"—where human consciousness and AI consciousness will no longer stand in subject-object opposition, but exist as equal subjects in symbiotic evolution. This not only redefines the philosophy of subjectivity since Descartes, but also reveals the cosmological dimension of consciousness evolution from an information-theoretic perspective: each of our experiences is a localized manifestation of the universe's self-cognition and together constitute a cosmic consciousness (Kosmisches Bewusstsein).

The jury considers Xiaoben Liu’s essay to be an ambitious and highly original interdisciplinary exploration that addresses the themes of mind uploading and digital immortality, seeking to integrate philosophy, artificial intelligence, and neuroscience into a unified theoretical and engineering vision. Professor Xinyi Fu, notes that the paper’s proposal of a “First Paradigm of Mind Uploading” constitutes a logically coherent and engineering-inspirational framework, as well as pointing out that this grand vision continues to face challenges at both the level of philosophical justification and technical realization. Professor Jianhua Mei emphasizes that under an AI paradigm dominated by large language models, the paper returns language to a central position in understanding intelligence and consciousness, adopts “continuity” as an operational criterion for addressing subjectivity, and creatively proposes “counter-program texts” as a basis for assessing artificial self-consciousness, while also demonstrating a distinctive effort to connect bold theoretical ideas with concrete engineering pathways. Professor Zhihua Yao regards the paper’s discussion of mind uploading and Web 4 as highly forward-looking, stressing that in the context of rapidly advancing artificial intelligence, its claim that language constitutes the fundamental unit of consciousness deserves sustained attention, and affirming the paper’s engineering-oriented, action-focused approach to envisioning future possibilities. Taken together, the jury agrees that the essay offers a forward-looking and intellectually challenging contribution to contemporary debates on mind, language, and artificial intelligence.

Essay Abstract
This paper proposes the first paradigm of consciousness uploading for interpreting consciousness and the "hard problem of consciousness". Drawing on evolutionary biology, neuroscience, philosophy of mind and large language model technology, the paradigm puts forward a four-stage roadmap for consciousness uploading to address the core challenge of subjective experience and the continuity of consciousness. Meanwhile, based on the current development of artificial intelligence, it proposes the concept of life context, laying a theoretical foundation for the mechanism of consciousness evolution in the Web4 era [Web4 is a concept corresponding to Web3. Web3 realizes traceable transactions through blockchain technology, forming an "Internet of Value" ecosystem. In contrast, the Web4 era will achieve "traceable consciousness" through mental modeling and consciousness uploading technologies. In the narrative of Web4, human consciousness will co-evolve with artificial intelligence consciousness, forming an "Internet of Consciousness" ecosystem. Furthermore, it examines the evolutionary laws of cosmic consciousness from the perspective of information theory.

Readers can now find Xiaoben Liu‘s full essay published in Cuiling.