a new paper on mind, computation, and identity in large language models. with inspiration from raymond carver (title) and severance (thought experiments). i'll be talking about this on saturday at the eleos AI conference on AI consciousness and welfare in berkeley. philpapers.org/rec/CHAWWT-8

David J. Chalmers, What we talk to when we talk to language models - PhilPapers

When we talk to large language models, who or what is our interlocutor? First, I address some issues about how best to characterize the interlocutor in terms of mental states. Second, ...

philpapers.org

claudia passos ferreira's great #TED2025 talk is now online! find out all about consciousness in newborn babies!

Inside the mind of a newborn baby

What if newborn babies are more aware than we ever imagined? Philosopher and psychologist Claudia Passos Ferreira shares groundbreaking neuroscience showing that newborn babies — and possibly even lat...

ted.com

the long-awaited video recording of the "25 Years of Consciousness" public event at the ASSC conference in NYC in june 2023 has been released: www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6DH.... i have a few thoughts on the other site (sorry!) at x.com/davidchalmer....

Public Event: 25 Years of Consciousness | ASSC 26, June 2023

YouTube video by NYU Center for Mind, Brain and Consciousness

youtube.com

we're advertising 2-3 postdoctoral positions to work at NYU on artificial consciousness and related topics at the intersection of AI and the philosophy of mind (possibly including AI mentality, AI interpretability, and AI welfare). deadline is march 30! philjobs.org/job/show/28878

a draft paper (for an invited talk at AAAI next month) with a philosophical analysis of work on mechanistic interpretability, with special attention to methods for propositional interpretability. arxiv.org/abs/2501.15740

Propositional Interpretability in Artificial Intelligence

Mechanistic interpretability is the program of explaining what AI systems are doing in terms of their internal mechanisms. I analyze some aspects of the program, along with setting out some concrete c...

arxiv.org

three excellent symposia on my book reality+ have just come out. two are mainly on the simulation hypothesis, one is mainly on VR. for all the articles and replies see consc.net/papers/reali....

i know X is getting overrun with deepfakes, but this was unexpected. (no, that's not me after the first frame, and i'm not speaking at the 2025 congreso futuro.) x.com/congresofutu...

my APA presidential address on "does thought require sensory grounding? from pure thinkers to large language models" is now published. i argue for no: so, even if LLMs lack sensory grounding, this doesn't entail that they can't think or understand.

David J. Chalmers, Does thought require sensory grounding? From pure thinkers to large language mode...

Does the capacity to think require the capacity to sense? A lively debate on this topic runs throughout the history of philosophy and now animates discussions of artificial intelligence. Many have ...

philpapers.org

on X, i asked: who endorses the AGI scaling hypothesis: roughly, that scaling current systems and methods will lead to human-level AGI? since bluesky is philosopher-heavy, let me also ask here: which philosophers endorse or have expressed sympathy with the hypothesis, or with something nearby?

Neuron Q&A: David J. Chalmers or, a philosopher encounters neuroscience www.cell.com/neuron/pdf/S...

as a jury member, i'm delighted that this year's berggruen prize for philosophy and culture has been awarded to patricia hill collins.

$1 Million Berggruen Philosophy Prize Awarded to Patricia Hill Collins – Berggruen Institute

berggruen.org