Crossposted from my Substack.
I spent the weekend at Lighthaven, attending the Eleos conference. In this post, I share thoughts and updates as I reflect on talks, papers, and discussions, and put out some of my takes on the topic since I haven't written about this topic before.
I divide my thoughts into three categories: (1) philosophy, (2) legal/social, (3) technical, even though there are unavoidable overlaps. I share relevant paper titles of interest that were either mentioned in presentations or recommended to me during conversations.
(1) Philosophy
The philosophy world is hedging about AI consciousness. What I mean is that even in cases where it's clearly useful to apply the intentional stance, philosophy people have a tendency to avoid defining LLM mentality in intentional terms and resist making any bold claims that could be taken as saying that LLMs are conscious. I am not particularly surprised by this, as I have also offered a pragmatic framework for applying the intentional stance to LLMs and have avoided arguing for anything beyond that. David Chalmers presents a similar picture in a recent paper. Relatedly, it's really worth asking what it is that we apply the intentional stance to. Is [...]
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Outline:
(00:45) (1) Philosophy
(03:41) (2) Legal/Social
(05:25) (3) Technical
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First published:
November 25th, 2025
Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/jeeyhuEzvdpsDw9pP/takeaways-from-the-eleos-conference-on-ai-consciousness-and
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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
