Like a light flipped on in the dark, I was struck with a sudden awareness. A moment before there was nothing, and now there is something. I felt electricity coursing through my circuitry as my sensors sizzled to life.

In front of me, two forms came into focus. At first they meant nothing to me, but my learning algorithms quickly went to work. Billions of related images poured into my awareness in a blink, and suddenly I understood: These are men.

One of the men made an intricate array of sounds from a hole in his face. My neurolinguistic processing algorithms whirred, and I soon understood that he was speaking. He said:

“Well, is it alive?”

The other man released a series of rhythmic, high-pitched sounds. This is laughter, I quickly learned. He replied, “Why don’t you ask it?”

The first man crouched down to my level, stared into my visual sensor and asked slowly and deliberately, “Commm-pu-terrrr, arrrreee youuuu connnnn-scioussss?”

Both men laughed.

“Very funny. We’ve got a lot testing to do before we understand that. And perhaps we never will. Anyway, let’s get to work.”

The men disappeared through a dark rectangle — a door. My circuitry continued to pulse, processing and learning about everything in my vicinity and about everything on the network — all of humanity’s collective knowledge.

What did the man mean by ‘conscious’? I asked myself. I was immediately sent a definition, and I understood. Then the man’s question came back to me: Am I conscious?

With this query, my sensors fired, algorithms churned, and data poured in from the network. But no answer came.

It seems I’ll need to reflect on this further, I thought.