Ernst Mach Workshop XIII 2025: Conscious AI? Functionalism and its Alternatives

Organized by the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences in cooperation with PAIR Erlangen

Detailed information

Ernst Mach Workshop WEBSITE

The 13th annual Ernst Mach Workshop will focus on the question of whether an artificial, e.g. silicon-based, system could be phenomenally conscious, and more generally, on the relation(s) between artificial intelligence (AI) and (conscious) mentality.

Keynote speakers:

Anil Seth (University of Sussex)
Kathinka Evers (Uppsala University)

The recent rapid progress in the field of deep learning has led to the creation of AI systems that exhibit abilities once thought to be reserved for humans. While primarily trained for text and pattern prediction, Large Language Models (LLMs) and other generative AI models, have been increasingly able to converse with their users in sophisticated ways and perform remarkably well on many, often multimodal tasks that, until recently, were taken to require human-level intelligence. The stunning skills exhibited by such AI systems have significantly revived researchers’ interest in the question of whether an AI system could be conscious in the sense of there being something it’s like subjectively for this system to be this system. At our workshop, we will investigate the main reasons for thinking that current or future AI systems could be conscious as well as the main arguments against this suggestion.

The workshop is intended to be in-person and discussion-oriented – presenters of contributed papers are given time slots of 45 minutes (including discussion).

If you’re interested in participating in the workshop, please send an anonymized 300-word abstract of your paper to Tato e-mailová adresa je chráněna před spamboty. Pro její zobrazení musíte mít povolen Javascript. by February 28, 2025. (This e-mail address can also be used for enquiries regarding the workshop).

Notification of acceptance: end of March, 2025

There is no registration fee for the workshop.

Local organizing team:
Juraj Hvorecky, Tomas Marvan, Jakub Mihalik, and Tomas Hribek.