Emerging Questions in AI Welfare, with Geoff Keeling

This talk investigates 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. I will provide some 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 and political challenges that arise from our uncertainty.

Dr. Geoff Keeling is a Staff Research Scientist at Google (Google Research). He is a philosopher working on the ethical and societal impacts of AI, with interests including alignment, manipulation, trust, digital minds, and human–AI relationships. Prior to Google, he held a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University, and he completed a PhD in Philosophy at the University of Bristol.

The seminar is followed by a time of questions and discussion.

A video version of the seminar is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7491zZ_OC4

The seminar took place over Zoom on 31 March 2026, and was hosted by Christopher Watkin (Monash University), as part of the project "Rewriting the Social Contract: Technology, Ecology, Extremism". This seminar is an initiative of the Social Contract Research Network.

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