NYU Animal Studies is thrilled to share that a new partner program called the NYU Mind, Ethics, and Policy (MEP) Program has now launched! MEP will conduct and support foundational research about the nature and intrinsic value of nonhuman minds, including biological and artificial minds. In particular, this program aims to advance understanding of the consciousness, sentience, sapience, moral status, legal status, and political status of nonhumans – with special focus on invertebrates and AIs – via research and outreach. The team will include Jeff Sebo as director, Sofia Fogel as coordinator, and Ned Block, Samuel Bowman, David Chalmers, Becca Franks, Joshua Lewis, S. Matthew Liao, Claudia Passos-Ferreira, Luke Roelofs, Katrina Wyman, and others as faculty affiliates. MEP has a variety of projects underway, and you can find information about two of them here. Please feel free to share with anyone who might be interested. David Chalmers Public Talk On October 13 2022 at 5:00pm ET, MEP will host a public talk by David Chalmers (University Professor of Philosophy and Neural Science and Co-Director of the Center for Mind, Brain, and Consciousness, NYU; author, The Conscious Mind, Constructing the World, and Reality+: Virtual Worlds and the Problems of Philosophy) on whether large language models are sentient. This talk, which will be co-sponsored by the NYU Center for Bioethics, the NYU Center for Mind, Brain, and Consciousness, and the NYU Minds, Brains, and Machines Initiative, will be free and open to the public, in person and online. You can RSVP here. Early-Career Award and Workshop MEP is announcing an Early-Career Award and Workshop on Animal and AI Consciousness. PhD students and early-career faculty (PhD 2017 or later) in any field are invited to submit current or recent (published 2021 or later) work on this topic. Selected authors will receive a $500 award and an all-expenses paid trip to the Association of Scientific Studies of Consciousness Conference at NYU in June 2023. They will also be invited to speak at a Workshop on Animal and AI Consciousness associated with this conference. You can find more information about this award and workshop, including about how to submit, here. Finally, if you have interest in receiving updates from MEP, you can visit their website or sign up for their email list. And if you have interest in participating in their work, you can contact Jeff Sebo (jeff...@nyu.edu) or Sofia Fogel (sofia...@nyu.edu) to discuss.
Please feel free to forward this message, as well as the attached flyers for the talk and award/workshop, to anyone who might be interested. Thank you! |
