Google DeepMind philosopher Henry Shevlin discusses AI ethics and consciousness
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Henry Shevlin remains affiliated with the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence at the University of Cambridge, but since May he has spent 80 percent of his time at Google DeepMind, where his title is Philosopher. In an interview with IEEE Spectrum, he says he was drawn by the potential for direct impact at AI labs and by the need to closely follow technology that is evolving rapidly.
Shevlin discusses how language models should be treated, the possibility of machine consciousness, potential moral rights and risks from system autonomy. He also says current models are at the frontier in mathematics and outperform humans at coding in some respects, although they may not produce the most dramatic forms of creativity. He distinguishes the conceptual content of model outputs from the repetitive style often associated with AI “slop,” which can be reduced through prompting and model adjustments.
Why it matters · editorial interpretation
Shevlin’s work between academia and an AI lab places questions about consciousness, moral rights, and autonomy in the context of systems that he says are already at the frontier in mathematics and outperform humans in some aspects of coding. This could bring philosophical debates closer to practical decisions about these models, without resolving their central questions.