Ri Science Podcast The science of consciousness: Could a conscious AI exist? - with Anil Seth
10 snips
Mar 25, 2026 
Anil Seth, cognitive and computational neuroscientist and director of the Centre for Consciousness Science, discusses scientific approaches to consciousness. He outlines major theories, contrasts top-down and bottom-up perception, and explores hallucinations and psychedelic states as research tools. He also examines the distinction between intelligence and subjective experience and warns against assuming AI has consciousness.
AI Snips
Chapters
Books
Transcript
Episode notes
Hard Problem Versus Mind Body Problem
- The hard problem asks how conscious experience relates to physical processing; the mind–body problem asks how mind relates to body.
- Seth calls the hard problem more fundamental and suggests chipping away via empirical brain–consciousness relations rather than denying experience.
Perception As Controlled Hallucination
- Perception is better modelled as top-down predictive inference where brain predictions shape experience and sensory input supplies prediction errors.
- Seth traces this idea to Helmholtz and frames perception as the brain's best guess about causes of sensory signals.
Parallel Routes Into Consciousness Science
- Studying perceptual diversity and mathematical emergence offers complementary routes into consciousness research.
- Sussex work examines individual differences in 'controlled hallucinations' and tries to quantify emergence in high-dimensional brain activity.
