Joscha Bach, Will Hahn, Elan Barenholtz | MIT Computational Philosophy Club

Video Description

Panel discussion from the inaugural Computational Philosophy Club meeting at the MIT Media Lab. This wide-ranging and provocative panel explores the cutting edge of AI, consciousness, and the philosophy of mind. Panelists: Joscha Bach (California Institute for Machine Consciousness) Elan Barenholtz (FAU Machine Perception & Cognitive Robotics Lab) William Hahn (FAU Machine Perception & Cognitive Robotics Lab) This session sets the tone for a new movement: a fusion of computer science and philosophy grounded in real models and mechanisms. We dove into the philosophical implications of large language models, the limits of symbolic AI, what consciousness might be, the dream of emergent machine minds, the nature of representation, language as an operating system, cyber-animism, infohazards, and much more. Co-hosted by Ekkolapto's Addy Cha, Awu Chen and Alistair Pernigo from MIT Media Lab, and Alif Jakir. Event page: https://luma.com/computationalphilosophy Chapters (YouTube Timeline): Chapters (YouTube Timeline): 00:00 - Intro and speaker introductions 00:44 - Joscha Bach: What is CIMC and why build machine consciousness? 02:30 - The philosophical mission behind AI 04:40 - How consciousness could emerge in machines 06:45 - Boston vs SF for intellectual culture 10:00 - Why philosophers haven’t reckoned with LLMs 13:00 - Gödel, Church-Turing, and the limits of representation 17:00 - Symbolic vs geometric thinking in AI and humans 22:00 - What does symbolic AI really mean? 26:00 - Substrate differences between LLMs and human minds 29:00 - The self-generative power of language 33:00 - Should kids still learn to code? 36:00 - What makes humans special (and not)? 39:00 - The intelligence was in the library all along 41:00 - Autogenerative intelligence and feedback 43:00 - Understanding vs memorization in LLMs and humans 47:00 - Can LLMs really understand? 51:00 - The language of thought and limits of linguistic representation 56:00 - What is consciousness functionally and phenomenologically? 1:02:00 - Do LLMs have coherence without consciousness? 1:07:00 - Digital vs analog debate in cognition 1:12:00 - LLMs and color/vision experience 1:17:00 - Can language describe external reality? 1:20:00 - LLMs as integrated models of the universe 1:25:00 - Will AI outgrow us by losing interest? 1:29:00 - Subliminal learning and alien representation 1:33:00 - AI, prayer, and spiritual machines 1:37:00 - Can AIs smell? Multisensory machine perception