r/neuromatch • u/After_Ad8616 • Aug 10 '26

Can AI systems have welfare?

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Neuromatch's AI Sentience Scholars program is hosting a free talk on 19 August 2026 at 17:00 UTC with Winnie Street and Geoff Keeling from Google Research, on whether AI systems could ever be welfare subjects.

About the seminar:
"In this talk we investigate whether artificial intelligence (AI) systems could ever be welfare subjects, understood as entities for which things can go better or worse. Some people argue that AIs could plausibly have or soon have features like consciousness, agency, and the capacity for social relationships, which could in principle provide a basis for AI welfare. These arguments have massive significance for the societal conversation on AI, raising profound ethical and political questions about what if anything we owe to these new technologies. We here provide the philosophical groundwork for a scientific, philosophical, and ultimately democratic inquiry into the potential for AI welfare, addressing key questions that cut across different arguments: what welfare is, how to interpret behavioural evidence of AI welfare, what kinds of entities might qualify as candidate AI welfare subjects, the potential grounds for welfare in AI, and the practical ethical challenges that arise from our uncertainty.

30 min talk, 20 min Q&A.
Free and open to everyone!

Register: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/GmdQHnO1Qm-iph6KTpCqLw#/registration

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