{"id":205991,"date":"2025-02-09T20:02:35","date_gmt":"2025-02-10T02:02:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/02\/qa-philosopher-david-chalmers-on-chatgpt-consciousness-and-his-days-at-washu"},"modified":"2025-02-09T20:02:35","modified_gmt":"2025-02-10T02:02:35","slug":"qa-philosopher-david-chalmers-on-chatgpt-consciousness-and-his-days-at-washu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/02\/qa-philosopher-david-chalmers-on-chatgpt-consciousness-and-his-days-at-washu","title":{"rendered":"Q&amp;A: Philosopher David Chalmers on ChatGPT, consciousness, and his days at WashU"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/qa-philosopher-david-chalmers-on-chatgpt-consciousness-and-his-days-at-washu.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>On September 20, as part of the <a href=\"https:\/\/triads.wustl.edu\/\" target=\"_blank\">TRIADS<\/a> Speaker Series, philosopher David Chalmers will visit WashU to pose a seemingly straightforward question: <a href=\"https:\/\/triads.wustl.edu\/events\/triads-speaker-series-david-chalmers?d=2024-09-20\" target=\"_blank\">\u201cCan ChatGPT Think?\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"display: block; margin: 0 auto; width: 100%; aspect-ratio: 4\/3; object-fit: contain;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/uhRhtFFhNzQ?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope;\n   picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>While Chalmers isn\u2019t in the business of providing a direct \u201cyes\u201d or \u201cno\u201d answer to philosophical quandaries like these, he\u2019s perhaps one of the best-qualified minds to ask the question and unravel its potential implications. Whether in the form of <a href=\"https:\/\/global.oup.com\/academic\/product\/the-conscious-mind-9780195117899?cc=us&lang=en&\" target=\"_blank\">books<\/a> or <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=uhRhtFFhNzQ\" target=\"_blank\">TED Talks<\/a>, Chalmers has grappled with the nature of human consciousness for the better part of three decades. And on a parallel track, he has kept a close eye on the development of artificial intelligence, penning journal articles on the subject and presenting at AI conferences since the early \u201990s.<\/p>\n<p>Chalmers, now a New York University Professor of Philosophy and Director of the NYU Center for Mind, Brain, and Consciousness, met via Zoom to discuss the marvels and mysteries of ChatGPT, how he uses philosophical questions to gauge the progress of large language models, and his two years spent at Washington University as a postdoctoral fellow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On September 20, as part of the TRIADS Speaker Series, philosopher David Chalmers will visit WashU to pose a seemingly straightforward question: \u201cCan ChatGPT Think?\u201d While Chalmers isn\u2019t in the business of providing a direct \u201cyes\u201d or \u201cno\u201d answer to philosophical quandaries like these, he\u2019s perhaps one of the best-qualified minds to ask the question [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":661,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-205991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-robotics-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/661"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205991"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205991\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}