The paper's wide circulation is not explained by philosophical novelty — it is explained by the gap it exposes between what a DeepMind scientist formally concluded and what DeepMind's leadership publicly asserts. Hassabis has built DeepMind's identity around the proximity of transformative, general-purpose AI. Lerchner's paper, by calling the assumption that AI can become conscious a 'fundamental fallacy,' does not merely dissent from an internal position — it undermines the conceptual scaffolding that . DeepMind has not issued a response distinguishing the paper…