Lectures on Tap - Conscious Machines: Science, Fiction, or Future?

📍 Location: Exact address given in confirmation email

🧠 Lecture: "Conscious Machines: Science, Fiction, or Future?"

🎤 Speaker: Professor Michael Cohen

Could a machine ever truly feel something? As artificial intelligence grows more sophisticated, this question has shifted from science fiction to serious scientific debate. Yet we still don’t fully understand how consciousness arises in our own biological brains.

In this provocative lecture, Professor Michael Cohen, Professor at Amherst College and Research Scientist at MIT, will explore what consciousness is, why it’s so difficult to study, and whether AI systems could ever be genuinely conscious rather than just simulating it. Along the way, he’ll examine why some researchers believe consciousness requires biological tissue, why others argue it’s substrate-independent, and why the debate remains unresolved.

The stakes are high: what we decide about machine consciousness will shape how we treat AI systems, how we regulate them, and how we understand ourselves.

Get a drink, connect, and learn at Lectures on Tap! 🙌

Agenda

6:30 PM – Doors open: find a seat (open seating!), order food & drinks, and expect a bar line—arriving early is key.

6:55 PM – Host introduction

7:00 PM – Lecture begins

7:45 PM – Audience Q&A

8:00 PM – Have 1:1 time with the speaker, mingle with fellow guests, and order another round

8:30 PM – Wrap up.

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

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