Can, will and should machines be conscious?

If some entity is conscious, or ‘sentient’, it makes sense to wonder what it is like to be that entity. You might ask, what is it like to be a dog, or even what is like to be a bat. Could one in principle ask the same question of a current or future AI system? Dr Sanjay Modgil will draw on our latest neuroscientific and philosophical theories of consciousness, as well as literary and cinematic depictions of AI, to suggest answers to this question, and to speculate as to what impact machines that we believe to be conscious, will have on humanity. 

Dr Sanjay Modgil is a Reader in Artificial Intelligence at the Department of Informatics, King's College London, and a visiting Professor at the Department of Philosophy, University of Milan. His research and teaching focuses on the ethics and the philosophy of Artificial Intelligence (AI), formal logic, and models of dialogue to enable humans and AI systems to communicate and reason together. See https://nms.kcl.ac.uk/sanjay.modgil/ for more details of his work and activities.

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This event is part of the , running from Tuesday 21 to Saturday 25 May 2024.

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Host or Publisher King’s Institute for Artificial Intelligence