Are conscious machines possible? | Oxford professor Michael Wooldridge

Oct 10, 2025

Michael Wooldridge, a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Oxford and author of 'A Brief History of AI,' dives into the world of artificial intelligence. He explains that AI aims to create intelligent task performers, not life. Wooldridge contrasts symbolic AI with machine learning and discusses the setbacks of the AI winter in the 1970s. He outlines contemporary successes in narrow AI while expressing the ambitious goal of AGI. Finally, he examines the complexities of developing conscious machines and the significant challenges of endowing AI with social skills.

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INSIGHT

AI's Goal Is Task Intelligence Not Life

AI aims to build machines that perform tasks requiring intelligence, not to create life itself.
Achieving the Hollywood vision would mean machines potentially become conscious like humans.

INSIGHT

Two Foundational AI Approaches

Early AI split into symbolic approaches and learning-from-examples approaches.
Symbolic AI encodes expert knowledge while machine learning lets systems infer behaviour from data.

INSIGHT

Data And Compute Revived Neural Networks

Neural networks existed since the 1940s but required lots of data and compute to work well.
Recent progress owes mainly to abundant data and far greater computational power over the last 15 years.

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University of Oxford professor explains how conscious machines are possible. In his book "A Brief History of AI," Michael Wooldridge, a professor of computer science at the University of Oxford and an AI researcher, explains that AI is not about creating life, but rather about creating machines that can perform tasks requiring intelligence. Wooldridge discusses the two approaches to AI: symbolic AI and machine learning. Symbolic AI involves coding human knowledge into machines, while machine learning allows machines to learn from examples to perform specific tasks. Progress in AI stalled in the 1970s due to a lack of data and computational power, but recent advancements in technology have led to significant progress. AI can perform narrow tasks better than humans, but the grand dream of AI is achieving artificial general intelligence (AGI), which means creating machines with the same intellectual capabilities as humans. One challenge for AI is giving machines social skills, such as cooperation, coordination, and negotiation. The path to conscious machines is slow and complex, and the mystery of human consciousness and self-awareness remains unsolved. The limits of computing are only bounded by imagination.

chapters: 0:00 The Hollywood dream of AI: consciousness 1:16 The birth of AI & machine learning 3:28 The AI winter 4:04 The next era of intelligence: AGI 5:03 Why do humans have big brains? 5:52 Creating conscious machines ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- About Michael Wooldridge: Michael Wooldridge is a professor of Computer Science and Head of the Department of Computer Science at the University of Oxford. Since earning his Ph.D. in AI, he has published more than 350 scientific articles on the subject. Mike has been at the heart of the AI community for a quarter of a century and knows most of the key figures in the international AI community. He has been president of the International Association for AI since 2015 and is a fellow of the American Association for AI. He has a long track record of public speaking and science communication on AI matters and related topics. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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