Cambridge University Press Opens New Book "AI and Consciousness" for Free
eschwitz · x · 2026-08-14
Philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel's new book AI and Consciousness, published by Cambridge University Press, is available for free online until August 26.
Key Insights:
- Timeline: Within the next 5 to 30 years, our most advanced AI systems might become as richly conscious as humans, or even more so.
- Uncertainty: AI's humanlike behavior might be a "shadow play of empty mimicry." Genuine consciousness could require intricate biological processes that silicon chips can never replicate.
- Science Lags: The central thesis is that "we do not know." Science lags behind while engineering sprints ahead.
The book explores definitions of consciousness, ten possibly essential features of consciousness, and critically examines the Turing Test, the Chinese Room, and computational functionalism.
Related event: Cambridge Book "AI and Consciousness" Free for Limited Time(2 posts)→
More from AGI Musings
- Sabine Hossenfelder fires back: academia's impact metric turned physics into a paper mill — skdh · 2026-10-16
- Researcher credits GPT for multiple accepted papers, incl. disproving Wegner's 1965 conjecture — ctjlewis · 2026-10-16
- dlwh: We optimized the legible version of our goals — and forgot the computation we meant to speed up — dlwh · 2026-10-16
- Ideas no longer have a waiting period: agents can build them as soon as they're articulable — akbirthko · 2026-10-16
- Ex-researcher: labs willing to cheat/distill ship great models faster than those building self-sufficient stacks — _aidan_clark_ · 2026-10-16
- Terry Tao reportedly still expects Riemann Hypothesis proof to be human+AI effort around 2050 — basedjensen · 2026-10-16