The Case Against Conscious AI

For centuries, people have fantasised about playing God, by creating artificial versions of ourselves. This is a dream reinvented with every breaking wave of technology, and with AI the wave is a big one. The AI systems we have around us are already intelligent, at least in some ways, but could they ever be conscious? Will an AI ever have feelings, including the ability to suffer? Many experts in AI seem to think so, but there are many reasons to be sceptical. Our brains are not computers made of meat, and consciousness is unlikely to be a matter of algorithms alone. Anil Seth will discuss the prospects for ‘conscious AI’, and the ethical and social implications of AI systems that either are, or merely appear to be, conscious. 

Anil Seth is a neuroscientist, author and public speaker who has pioneered research into the brain basis of consciousness for more than twenty-five years. He is a Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience and the Director of the Centre for Consciousness Science at the University of Sussex, a Co-Director of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research Program on Brain, Mind and Consciousness, a European Research Council Advanced Investigator, and the former Editor-in-Chief of the academic journal Neuroscience of Consciousness.
His book Being You: A New Science of Consciousness was an instant Sunday Times Bestseller and a 2021 Book of the Year for The Economist, The New Statesman, Bloomberg Business, The Guardian, The Financial Times and elsewhere.

The Tans Lecture is organised every year to honour Dr. J. Tans (1912-1993), the founding father of Maastricht University.