Now, @andrewcopson.bsky.social is explaining that the #VoltaireLecture will be known as the Rationalist Press Lecture from 2026 onwards, in honour of the Rationalist Press Association. heritage.humanists.uk/rationalist-...
4/ And so we ended on Anil's beliefs on the possibility of conscious AI versus others', the ethics of creating something which could suffer, especially in ways we could never understand, and Descartes, a favourite of humanists.
A glorious #VoltaireLecture.
Anil says both can be true. Just as there is clearly a difference between one grain of sand and a mound of sand, there is also a difference between sand and no sand. #VoltaireLecture
'Do you believe in free will?' asks one questioner.
The audience laughs at the enormity of the question.
'It's not like this at Labour conference!' jokes Ian.
'There's a reason I didn't mention free will in the lecture!' says Anil, although he says it isn't super relevant here.
#VoltaireLecture
Professor Seth on stage with a slide that reads: real artificial consciousness is unlikely • cultural baggage • psychological biases •brains are not computers • simulation is not instantiation • consciousness and life may be tied together • (artificial intelligence is of course much more feasible) •(but intelligence and consciousness are not the same thing)
Fascinating @humanists.uk #VoltaireLecture by @anilseth.bsky.social in consciousness and AI.
Both comforting and worrying, with lots to ponder.
We're now over to the Q&A session with @iandunt.bsky.social and @anilseth.bsky.social. The first question asks: if consciousness is an emerging property of the structure of our brains, could computers mirror this structure closely enough to recreate this? Anil dissects this.
#VoltaireLecture
Powerful closing words to rapturous applause: 'Let's think for ourselves, while we still can.' #VoltaireLecture
'Voltaire encouraged us to think for ourselves and push back on dogma and arguments from authority. Think for yourselves through the arguments for AI consciousness and push back against false certainties.' #VoltaireLecture
On the question of 'What is consciousness?', Anil quotes Voltaire, for whom the #VoltaireLecture is named, who stated simply:
'Cherish those who seek the truth but beware of those who find it.'
'Brains and biological systems are anchored in time,' quite unlike timeless algorithms, says Anil, giving one of many examples of how brains are much more complex. What a brain does is not necessarily all that it is. #VoltaireLecture
'When things experience abilities we see as distinctively human, like language, we project onto LLMs things we think of as distinctively human, like mind and consciousness.' #VoltaireLecture
Anil says he started this lecture with the cultural inheritance of this question - the idea of the golem or Frankenstein's monster - which informs how we assess the question of AIs becoming conscious.
#VoltaireLecture
'It's life, rather than information processing, that breathes the fire into consciousness... our nature as living, embodied, metabolically active creatures.' #VoltaireLecture
(Digressing back to #TheDress briefly, we put a poll to our YouTube viewers. 60% perceive a blue and black dress, and 40% perceive a white and gold one. So weird!) #VoltaireLecture
Something like the dress can help us have a bit of epistemic humility: 'It can help me see that there is not always a single right way of seeing things.' #VoltaireLecture
A favourite! Now #TheDress highlights how we may all see a very different world from one another. We may not realise how often this is already the case in the world we live in.
Do you see the dress as blue and black, or white and gold?
#VoltaireLecture
Now, a quotation from the Jewish talmud(!) for you: 'We do not see things as they are. We see them as we are.' #VoltaireLecture
We used to think perception flowed from the outside in, but now neuroscience suggests perception goes from inside ➡ out.
'Our brains are always casting predictions out there into this constant sea of sensory input,' he says, explaining the phenomenon of #paraeidolia.
#VoltaireLecture
'What's happening here is your brain has knowledge you didn't know you have - how colours look in shadows, and how checkerboards work. Your brain's perception is defined by expectations, not the reality of the sensory input.' #VoltaireLecture
'For a world of objects and people to appear, the brain has to combine sensory signals that are not labelled with prior expectations and beliefs about the world, to make a best guess at what is causing those signals.'
Visual illusions help to demonstrate how this might work. #VoltaireLecture
One theory is that the brain is a kind of 'prediction machine' and that what the brain experiences is in fact just our brain's best guess at the reality that is perceived by our senses, says Anil. The classic metaphor of Plato's cave - interpreting shadows on the wall. #VoltaireLecture
'Out of three wavelengths, our brain somehow conjures up a reality of millions of colours... out of a thin slice of reality that our minds are sensitive to. We experience both less than and more than is really there. And what applies to colour applies to just about everything.'
#VoltaireLecture
Little by little, says Anil, scientists solved the hard problem of 'What is life?'
The analogy suggests that, step by step, one question at a time, scientists can begin to chip away at the mystery of 'What is consciousness?'
And in fact, that process is already under way.
#VoltaireLecture
Now Anil is discussing David Chalmers' so-called 'hard problem of consciousness'. Even if you understand how the brain works as a complex biological machine, it would shed no light on why experience of any kind should go along with it. That's the suspicion of the hard problem. #VoltaireLecture
What is the difference between 'consciousness' and 'intelligence', asks Anil?
'Intelligence is the ability to achieve goals by flexible means. It's all about doing.
'Consciousness is all about being and feeling. They go together in humans... but not always in general.'
#VoltaireLecture
Shout out to the 1000 or so people on the live stream, including some as far away as Malta, Canada, and Texas! Lots of love from all of us here in London. #VoltaireLecture
'Consciousness is what goes away when we fall into a dreamless sleep and what returns when we wake up again,' says Anil, offering one definition
'General anaesthesia is different from sleep. You're just gone. When you're anaesthetised you're turned off. That's consciousness' #VoltaireLecture
2025's @humanists.uk #VoltaireLecture is delivered by Professor @anilseth.bsky.social and chaired by @iandunt.bsky.social, the former of whom has begun with a clip of Universal's 'Frankenstein'. An excellent choice. 😁
'With consciousness comes moral or ethical status. And it matters to us too. If we feel that our AI companions really feel things, our vulnerabilities can be exploited... The way we think about conscious AI really tells us about our own consciousness' and what it means to be human. #VoltaireLecture
'What is consciousness & could AI have it' - this year's #VoltaireLecture with @anilseth.bsky.social from @humanists.uk .
