Susan Schneider, NASA’s Baruch Blumberg Chair of Astrobiology and director of the AI, Mind, and Society groups at the University of Connecticut, explores pressing philosophical questions about consciousness, selfhood, ethics, and humanity.
In this talk – and her book, “Artificial You: AI and the Future of Your Mind” – Schneider questions whether consciousness is an inevitable byproduct of sophisticated intelligence and considers the risks and promises of creating machine minds.
About Speaker: Susan Schneider writes about the nature of the self and mind, especially from the vantage point of issues in philosophy, AI, cognitive science, and astrobiology. In her recent book, Artificial You: AI and the Future of the Mind, she discusses the philosophical implications of AI, and, in particular, the enterprise of “mind design.” As the NASA chair, Schneider has recently completed a two-year project with NASA on the future of intelligence. She now works with Congress on AI policy. She also appears frequently on television shows on stations such as PBS and The History Channel (see below for clips) as well as keynoting conferences at places such as Harvard and Cambridge. She also writes opinion pieces for the New York Times, Scientific American, and The Financial Times. Her work has been widely discussed in the media, (see “media” above), at venues like The New York Times, Science, Big Think, Nautilus, Discover, and Smithsonian. She is currently working on a new book on the shape of intelligent systems (with W.W. Norton). She is the founding director of the new Center for the Future Mind.
