Toggle light / dark theme

Machine Consciousness & AI Awakening — Davidad and Joscha Bach moderated by Lou de K

Are today’s AI systems conscious? What would it mean if they were? And what kind of future should we build if machine consciousness is possible?This first episode of our podcast series focuses on Machine Consciousness and the concept of an AI Awakening.

In this wide-ranging conversation, Joscha Bach (California Institute for Machine Consciousness) and Davidad explore some of the deepest questions at the intersection of AI, philosophy, cognitive science, and the future of civilization. Moderated by Lou de K (CIMC), the discussion was originally recorded ahead of the MC0001 conference (www.machine-consciousness.ai).

The conversation covers:

Whether current large language models might already possess some form of consciousness.
Consciousness as a computational and substrate-independent phenomenon.
The \

Frame-dragging observations validate Einstein yet again

More than a century after Albert Einstein first transformed our understanding of gravity, his general theory of relativity continues to withstand ever more demanding experimental tests. Now, an international team led by Ignazio Ciufolini at the Chinese Academy of Sciences has carried out the most precise measurement yet of one of the theory’s most subtle predictions: the dragging of spacetime caused by Earth’s rotation.

Published in Nature, the team’s results provide the strongest confirmation to date that Einstein’s description of gravity remains accurate even under extraordinarily precise scrutiny.

/* */