The Wrong Question? Artificial Consciousness and the Politics of AI Agency

Debates about artificial consciousness ask whether AI systems possess subjective experience or intentionality. This paper argues that this question, while philosophically legitimate, displaces attention from a more consequential issue: what institutional order is already being built around systems treated as quasi-agents. We identify a structural contradiction at the heart of current AI discourse --- systems are simultaneously described in the vocabulary of autonomous agency and governed as permanently controllable artifacts --- and argue that its implications for alignment, accountability, and governance deserve more direct attention than the metaphysical question alone.