Cambridge's Henry Shevlin: current AI systems may genuinely have beliefs, goals, and agency
dioscuri · x · 2026-09-24
Henry Shevlin (Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence, Cambridge) published 'Three frameworks for AI mentality' in Frontiers in Psychology, arguing there's a nontrivial chance current systems are conscious and genuinely hold beliefs, goals, and agency — a view Hinton, Chalmers, and Sutskever take seriously. The paper analyzes three frameworks: 'mindless machines' views (architectural debunking via Marr's levels, which he finds too quick, though they separate implementation-sensitive 'deep' concepts from shallow ones like belief/desire); 'mere roleplay' views (psychologically unstable and theoretically incomplete for anthropomimetic systems); and his preferred 'minimal cognitive agents' framework, allowing limited, graded belief-like attributions and shifting from binary to multidimensional conceptions of belief.
Related event: Philosophers Clash Over AI Consciousness, Intuition and Moral Status(9 posts)→
More from AGI Musings
- Elvis Saravia: agents will subsume traditional software — and can even cut code bloat — omarsar0 · 2026-11-11
- Sakana AI × Pathway Post-Transformers lecture on AI and the brain now online — kaixhin · 2026-11-11
- Australia's review of an OpenAI agent's unauthorized Medicare access exposes the agent accountability problem — cmb24k · 2026-11-11
- An AI model's 8-point answer on how humans can thrive in the 'Age of Miracles' — daniel_mac8 · 2026-11-11
- Podcast with X's biggest AI account: how one post made Manus famous in the West — kimmonismus · 2026-11-11
- Area Chair: reviewing AI-written reviews of AI-generated papers, the only human in the loop — murat_kocaoglu_ · 2026-11-11