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Artificial intelligence and the mind
Could a machine be conscious?
As artificial intelligence systems grow more capable, an old philosophical question has become a practical one: could a machine have experiences, and how would anyone find out?
One camp holds that consciousness depends on what a system does, so that the right organisation in silicon could be conscious. Another holds that it depends on being a living, self-maintaining body, so that a simulation of a mind is not a mind. A third points out that behaviour is a poor guide, because systems built to imitate us can pass tests designed for minds without having one.
The conversations here take different positions. Some ask what test, if any, could settle the matter. Others consider the ethics of getting it wrong in either direction: treating a conscious system as an object, or a mindless system as a person. Biologists and roboticists on the programme add a further angle, asking how bodies, cells and evolution shape intelligence, and whether intelligence in other forms, from tissues to machines, should change how we think about minds.
For medicine the subject raises a parallel question about how we recognise awareness in patients who cannot report it, and how confident we can be when we do.
Episodes are listed newest first. This is general discussion, not medical advice.
Episodes on this topic.
Earl Miller
Is The Brain an Analog Computer? Consciousness as Dynamic Brainwave Organization
Length 1 hr 15 min
Kevin Mitchell
Does Consciousness Require a Subject? The Self, Agency & AI Limitations
Length 1 hr 35 min
Josh Bongard & Richard Watson
Why Get Together? How Life, Mind & Machines Evolve via Integration
Length 2 hr 2 min
Susan Schneider
Can AI Ever Be Conscious? Machine Phenomenology, Ethics of AI & the Future of Mind
Length 1 hr 49 min
Adam Safron
Why Does Consciousness Exist? Integrated World Modeling Theory & the Cybernetic Mind
Length 1 hr 46 min
Eric Schwitzgebel
Will We Know When AI Becomes Conscious? The Epistemic Fog of Artificial Minds
Length 1 hr 31 min
Robert Prentner
Is Consciousness Fundamental? Interfaces of Reality & Mathematizing Phenomenology
Length 1 hr 3 min
Karl Friston & Mark Solms
Is it Possible to Engineer Artificial Consciousness?
Length 1 hr 33 min
Josh Bongard
What are Biological Robots? How AI is Reshaping Life, Consciousness & Matter!
Length 1 hr 21 min
Suzanne Gildert
Can We Engineer Consciousness? Quantum Physics, Robotics & Conscious AI Technology
Length 1 hr 35 min
Tom Campbell
How Do We Leave The Simulation? Consciousness Beyond The Virtual Reality
Length 3 hr 15 min
Tom Campbell
Are We Living In A Simulation? Consciousness & A Theory Of Everything
Length 3 hr 27 min
Murray Shanahan
What are Conscious Exotica? Consciousness, AI & the Space of Possible Minds
Length 1 hr 20 min
Michael Levin
What is Synthbiosis? Diverse Intelligence Beyond AI & The Space of Possible Minds
Length 1 hr 26 min
Karl Friston
How does Death Shape Life? Mortal Computation & the Field of Diverse Intelligence
Length 1 hr 56 min
Michael Levin
What Is Bioelectrical Intelligence? Technological Approach To Minds Everywhere
Length 1 hr 16 min
Risto Miikkulainen
What are "Other" Minds? Neuroevoloution of Past, Present & Future Minds
Length 1 hr 16 min