Anticipating an Einstein moment in the understanding of consciousness, with Henry Shevlin

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Our guest in this episode is Henry Shevlin. Henry is the Associate Director of the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence at the University of Cambridge, where he also co-directs the Kinds of Intelligence program and oversees educational initiatives.

He researches the potential for machines to possess consciousness, the ethical ramifications of such developments, and the broader implications for our understanding of intelligence.

In his 2024 paper, “Consciousness, Machines, and Moral Status,” Henry examines the recent rapid advancements in machine learning and the questions they raise about machine consciousness and moral status. He suggests that public attitudes towards artificial consciousness may change swiftly, as human-AI interactions become increasingly complex and intimate. He also warns that our tendency to anthropomorphise may lead to misplaced trust in and emotional attachment to AIs.

Note: this episode is co-hosted by David and Will Millership, the CEO of a non-profit called Prism (Partnership for Research Into Sentient Machines). Prism is seeded by Conscium, a startup where both Calum and David are involved, and which, among other things, is researching the possibility and implications of machine consciousness. Will and Calum will be releasing a new Prism podcast focusing entirely on Conscious AI, and the first few episodes will be in collaboration with the London Futurists Podcast.

Selected follow-ups:

PRISM podcast
Henry Shevlin - personal site
Kinds of Intelligence - Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence
Consciousness, Machines, and Moral Status - 2024 paper by Henry Shevlin
Apply rich psychological terms in AI with care - by Henry Shevlin and Marta Halina
What insects can tell us about the origins of consciousness - by Andrew Barron and Colin Klein
Consciousness in Artificial Intelligence: Insights from the Science of Consciousness - By Patrick Butlin, Robert Long, et al
Association for the Study of Consciousness

Other researchers mentioned:

Blake Lemoine
Thomas Nagel
Ned Block
Peter Senge
Galen Strawson
David Chalmers
David Benatar
Thomas Metzinger
Brian Tomasik
Murray Shanahan

Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration

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