Exploring Machine Consciousness – Details, episodes & analysis

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Exploring Machine Consciousness

PRISM

Technology

Science

Frequency: 1 episode/28d. Total Eps: 16

A podcast from PRISM (The Partnership for Research Into Sentient Machines), exploring the possibility and implications of machine consciousness. Visit www.prism-global.com for more about our work.

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🇫🇷 France - technology
02/08/2026
#97

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https://www.prism-global.com/
6 shares
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2403.17101
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https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.21159341
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moral_Circle
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https://www.buzzsprout.com/2028982
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16. Heather Alexander: AI Rights and Legal Personhood

Wednesday, July 22, 2026 • Duration 59:08

Heather is a lawyer and scholar of nationality, citizenship and statelessness. She began her career as an asylum lawyer with the UN Refugee Agency and spent fifteen years working on statelessness around the world. Her book on the nationality rights and legal identity of nomadic peoples was published by Oxford last year.

Heather brings that background to the emerging debate over the legal status of the AI systems and has co-founded the Lab for the Future of Citizenship with philosopher of mind Jonathan Simon, which treats citizenship and the rule of law as foundations of AI safety. She also writes a popular blog, “Future of Citizenship” where she discusses these questions in a more informal and accessible context.

Her recent research includes a report on US state bills that ban AI personhood, and papers on legal identity for future AI systems and the legal status of nonhuman speech.

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15. Eric Schwitzgebel: Exotic Minds and the Design Policies for Conscious AI

Wednesday, June 24, 2026 • Duration 01:12:25

Guest Bio

Eric Schwitzgebel is the Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Riverside and one of the most distinctive voices working at the intersection of philosophy of mind, consciousness, ethics, and epistemology. His work is known for questioning assumptions about introspection, expertise, and the limits of human understanding; themes explored in books including The Weirdness of the World and The Unreliability of Naive Introspection. His forthcoming book, AI and Consciousness: A Skeptical Overview, examines how rapid progress in AI complicates long-standing debates about conscious experience and moral status.

Episode Summary:

In this episode, Eric joins Henry Shevlin and Calum Chace for a wide-ranging discussion on machine consciousness, philosophical uncertainty, and whether humanity may be forced to make ethical decisions before science gives us definitive answers. We discuss:
Why Eric remains skeptical of claims that philosophy, neuroscience, or AI research are close to solving consciousness, and why uncertainty itself may be more persistent than we assume.
His broader philosophical outlook: the idea that reality may be fundamentally stranger, messier, and less tractable than our theories suggest.
Whether current theories of consciousness can meaningfully tell us if advanced AI systems are conscious, and why Eric thinks we should be cautious about overconfidence in either direction.
The possibility that future AI systems could become conscious before humanity develops reliable ways to recognize or measure it.
How debates around machine consciousness intersect with questions of moral uncertainty, responsibility, and the ethics of creating potentially sentient systems.
Whether superintelligent systems might ultimately help humanity understand consciousness itself, or whether some questions remain permanently difficult.
The philosophical implications of alien minds, simulation arguments, and forms of intelligence radically unlike our own.
Why Eric would prefer a future containing conscious superintelligence over unconscious “zombie” intelligence; not because it benefits humanity, but because it may make the universe richer and more interesting.
The growing role AI already plays in intellectual work and whether language models will begin contributing genuinely original insights to research.
Eric argues that if AI forces us to confront consciousness before we fully understand it, then humility, moral caution, and intellectual openness may become more valuable than certainty.

Credits

Hosts: Henry Shevlin, Calum Chace
Guest: Eric Schwitzgebel
Podcast: Exploring Machine Consciousness
Produced by: PRISM
Editor: Gerry Okinyi

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6. Clara Colombatto: Perceptions of Consciousness, Intelligence, and Trust in Large Language Models

Monday, October 13, 2025 • Duration 47:23

Clara is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Waterloo in Canada, where she directs the Vision and Cognition Lab.

Her lab is investigating various aspects of perception and cognition, with a particular focus on the perception of other minds and the visual roots of social cognition.

The lab is also exploring how we can perceive not just others’ perceptual and cognitive states, but also their metacognitive states such as awareness, confidence, or uncertainty — and how such impressions facilitate communication and collaboration.

Useful links:

Clara Colombatto personal website.
Vision and Cognition Lab website.
Folk psychological attributions of consciousness to large language models. Article.
Illusions of Confidence in Artificial Systems. Article.
PRISM website.

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5. Keith Frankish: Illusionism and Its Implications for Conscious AI

Wednesday, September 10, 2025 • Duration 01:05:42

Keith is an Honorary Professor in the Philosophy Department at the University of Sheffield, a Visiting Research Fellow with The Open University, and an Adjunct Professor with the Brain and Mind Programme at the University of Crete.

Keith is best known for his theory of illusionism—the view that phenomenal consciousness, or the subjective feeling of experience, is an illusion. Rather than denying that we have conscious experiences, Keith argues that our intuitive conception of them as inherently mysterious or non-physical is mistaken.

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4. Mark Solms: Engineering Consciousness – Can Robots "Give a Damn?"

Thursday, August 7, 2025 • Duration 01:02:00

In this episode, we ask: if we wanted to construct a conscious mind from scratch, what would we need? That is the question our guest, Professor Mark Solms, addressed in the final chapter of his book The Hidden Spring - a Journey to the Source of Consciousness.

Mark is a Professor in Neuropsychology at the University of Cape Town, and is president of the South African Psychoanalytical Association. He is also an advisor to PRISM and Conscium.

Mark has contributed significantly to our understanding of consciousness through his pioneering research in the field of neuropsychoanalysis, which integrates Freudian theory with findings from contemporary neuroscience.

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3. Jeff Sebo: AI Sentience, Welfare and Moral Status

Monday, July 14, 2025 • Duration 45:43

In this episode, we spoke to Jeff Sebo of New York University. Jeff is the author of the recently published book The Moral Circle: Who Matters, What Matters and Why.

In it, he challenges us to expand our moral concern beyond the boundaries of species and substrate. He has also co-authored a number of papers arguing that AI welfare is an issue that needs to be taken seriously today.

Links:

The Moral Circle: Who Matters, What Matters and Why. Book.
Jeff Sebo personal website.
Moral consideration for AI systems by 2030. (Paper).
Is there a tension between AI safety and AI welfare?. (Paper)
Prism website.

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2. Susan Schneider: Organoids, LLMs, and tests for AI consciousness

Monday, June 23, 2025 • Duration 45:23

In the second episode of Exploring Machine Consciousness, we welcomed philosopher and AI expert Professor Susan Schneider to discuss consciousness, quantum physics, and the future of conscious machines.

Susan introduces her “Superpsychism” theory, exploring quantum coherence as a basis for consciousness, and explains why the AI Consciousness Test (ACT) could help determine whether machines truly have experiences - or are just mimicking human responses.

Susan is sceptical that current LLMs show any convincing signs of consciousness. But believes that hybrid systems of organoids and LLMs could be compelling candidates for consciousness.

Links:

Susan Schneider's website
Superpsychism, paper by Susan Schneider & Mark Bailey
Artificial You: AI and the Future of Your Mind, book by Susan Schneider
Chatbot Epistemology, paper by Susan Schneider
If a Chatbot Tells You It Is Conscious, Should You Believe It?, article in the Scientific American
The Easy Part of the Hard Problem: A Resonance Theory of Consciousness, paper by Tam Hunt and Jonathan Schooler
PRISM website: https://www.prism-global.com/

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1. Henry Shevlin: Anticipating an Einstein moment in the understanding of consciousness

Wednesday, May 28, 2025 • Duration 41:02

Welcome to the first episode of Understanding Machine Consciousness. This episode is a collaboration with The London Futurists Podcast.

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:

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

14. Megan Peters: Metacognition, Neuroscience, and Tests for AI Consciousness

Friday, May 15, 2026 • Duration 53:31

Megan Peters is Associate Professor in the Department of Cognitive Sciences at the University of California, Irvine, and incoming faculty at University College London, where her lab investigates consciousness, metacognition, uncertainty, and the computational principles underlying subjective experience. She is also a Fellow in the CIFAR Brain, Mind & Consciousness Program, an elected board member of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness, and co-founder and president of Neuromatch, a global educational and research community spanning neuroscience, AI, and computational science.

Episode Summary: In this episode, Megan discusses the relationship between metacognition and consciousness, the limits of current AI systems, and the scientific challenges involved in testing for consciousness beyond biological organisms. Drawing from neuroscience, philosophy, and science fiction, she argues that machine consciousness is no longer a purely speculative topic, but an increasingly urgent scientific and societal question. We discuss:

How Megan’s early interests in philosophy of mind, cognitive science, and science fiction led her toward studying subjective experience and machine consciousness.
Why metacognition; the brain’s ability to monitor and model its own uncertainty, may play a central role in conscious experience, reality monitoring, and adaptive learning.
The distinction between effortful, reflective metacognition and the more automatic self-monitoring processes that may exist across humans, animals, and potentially artificial systems.
Why current large language models can imitate certain features of metacognitive reasoning while still failing at core forms of reality monitoring, belief stability, and self-consistency.
The problem of “privileged access” in AI systems, and whether current models possess any meaningful distinction between representations of themselves and representations of others.
Why Megan remains skeptical that present-day LLMs are conscious, particularly given the absence of temporal continuity, coherent selfhood, and persistent internal identity.
The difficulty of testing for consciousness in non-human systems, and why most existing consciousness tests are deeply constrained by assumptions rooted in human biology and language.
The “iterative natural kind strategy” for consciousness science: a framework for refining tests of consciousness by comparing how different measures co-vary across humans, animals, and potentially artificial systems.

13. Henry Shevlin: Past, Present, and Future of AI Consciousness

Wednesday, April 29, 2026 • Duration 01:07:31

In this episode of Exploring Machine Consciousness, Dr. Henry Shevlin returns to explore how our understanding of consciousness is evolving in the age of advanced AI.

From philosophy and neuroscience to the rapid progress of modern language models, Henry examines whether intelligence alone is enough, or whether something deeper (like continuous experience) is required for consciousness.

Henry argues that consciousness is no longer just a philosophical or scientific puzzle, but a question that will increasingly be shaped by technological development and societal choice. As AI systems become more capable, more autonomous, and more socially embedded, how we interpret and respond to them may prove as consequential as the question of whether they are conscious in
the first place.

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Exploring Machine Consciousness – Details, episodes & analysis

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Exploring Machine Consciousness – Details, episodes & analysis

Podcast details

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