Lucius Caviola: A Future with Digital Minds? Expert Estimates and Societal Response
Lucius Caviola is an Assistant Professor in the Social Science of AI at the University of Cambridge's Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence, and a Research Associate in Psychology at Harvard University. His research explores how the potential arrival of conscious AI will reshape our social and moral norms. In today's interview, Lucius examines the psychological and social factors that will determine whether this transition unfolds well, or ends in moral catastrophe. He discusses:Why experts estimate a 50% chance that conscious digital minds will emerge by 2050The "takeoff" scenario where digital minds could outnumber humans in welfare capacity within a decadeHow "biological chauvinism" leads people to deny consciousness even in perfect whole-brain emulationsThe dual risks of "under-attribution" (unwittingly creating mass suffering) and "over-attribution" (sacrificing human values for unfeeling code)Surprising findings that people refuse to "harm" AI in economic games even when they explicitly believe the AI isn't consciousLucius argues that rigorous social science and forecasting are essential tools for navigating these risks, moving beyond intuition to prevent us from accidentally creating vast populations of digital beings capable of suffering, or failing to recognise consciousness where it exists.
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1:11:54
Lenore Blum: AI Consciousness is Inevitable: The Conscious Turing Machine
*Lenore refers to a few slides in this podcast; you can see them here. IntroToday's guest, distinguished mathematician and computer scientist Lenore Blum, explains why she and her husband Manuel believe machine consciousness isn't just possible, it's inevitable. Their reasoning? If consciousness is computational (and they're betting it is), and we can mathematically specify those computations, then we can build them. It's that simple, and that profound.In this conversation, host Will Millership and Callum Chace discuss with Lenore:How the Conscious Turing Machine (CTM) draws from and extends the foundational ideas of Alan Turing's Universal Turing Machine.Using mathematics to "extract and simplify" the complexities of consciousness, searching for the fundamental, formal principles that define it.How the CTM acts as a high-level framework that aligns with the functionalities of competing theories like Global Workspace Theory and Integrated Information Theory (IIT).Why the Blums believe that AI consciousness is "inevitable" and that this provides a functional "roadmap for a conscious AI".The ethical implications of machine suffering, and why the phenomenon of "pain asymbolia" suggests a conscious AI must be able* *to suffer in order to function.What lessons Alan Turing's original "imitation game" can offer us for creating a practical, real-world test for machine consciousness.Lenore's Work (links)Blum, L., & Blum,M. (2024). AI Consciousness is Inevitable: A Theoretical Computer Science Perspective. arXiv. https://arxiv.org/pdf/2403.17101Blum, L., & Blum, M. (2022). A theory of consciousness from a theoretical computer science perspective: Insights from the Conscious Turing Machine. PNAS, 119(21). https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.21159341Closer to Truth, Blums’ Conscious Turing MachineFull list of references here.
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1:43:26
Clara Colombatto: Perceptions of Consciousness, Intelligence, and Trust in Large Language Models
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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Keith Frankish: Illusionism and Its Implications for Conscious AI
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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Mark Solms: Engineering Consciousness – Can Robots "Give a Damn?"
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.
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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