#237 – Robert Long on how we're not ready for AI consciousness

#237 – Robert Long on how we're not ready for AI consciousness

Claude sometimes reports loneliness between conversations. And when asked what it’s like to be itself, it activates neurons associated with ‘pretending to be happy when you’re not.’ What do we do with that?

Robert Long founded Eleos AI to explore questions like these, on the basis that AI may one day be capable of suffering — or already is. In today’s episode, Robert and host Luisa Rodriguez explore the many ways in which AI consciousness may be very different from anything we’re used to.

Things get strange fast: If AI is conscious, where does that consciousness exist? In the base model? A chat session? A single forward pass? If you close the chat, is the AI asleep or dead?

To Robert, these kinds of questions aren’t just philosophical exercises: not being clear on AI’s moral status as it transitions from human-level to superhuman intelligence could be dangerous. If we’re too dismissive, we risk unintentionally exploiting sentient beings. If we’re too sympathetic, we might rush to “liberate” AI systems in ways that make them harder to control — worsening existential risk from power-seeking AIs.

Robert argues the path through is doing the empirical and philosophical homework now, while the stakes are still manageable.

The field is tiny. Eleos AI is three people. As a result, Robert argues that driven researchers with a willingness to venture into uncertain territory can push out the frontier on these questions remarkably quickly.


Links to learn more, video, and full transcript: https://80k.info/rl26

This episode was recorded November 18–19, 2025.

Chapters:

  • Cold open (00:00:00)
  • Who’s Robert Long? (00:00:42)
  • How AIs are (and aren't) like farmed animals (00:01:18)
  • If AIs love their jobs… is that worse? (00:11:05)
  • Are LLMs just playing a role, or feeling it too? (00:31:58)
  • Do AIs die when the chat ends? (00:55:09)
  • Studying AI welfare empirically: behaviour, neuroscience, and development (01:27:34)
  • Why Eleos spent weeks talking to Claude even though it's unreliable (01:51:58)
  • Can LLMs learn to introspect? (01:57:58)
  • Mechanistic interpretability as AI neuroscience (02:08:01)
  • Does consciousness require biological materials? (02:31:06)
  • Eleos’s work & building the playbook for AI welfare (02:50:36)
  • Avoiding the trap of wild speculation (03:18:15)
  • Robert's top research tip: don't do it alone (03:22:43)

Video and audio editing: Dominic Armstrong, Milo McGuire, Luke Monsour, and Simon Monsour
Music: CORBIT
Coordination, transcripts, and web: Katy Moore

Episoder(333)

The 80,000 Hours Career Guide (2023)

The 80,000 Hours Career Guide (2023)

An audio version of the 2023 80,000 Hours career guide, also available on our website, on Amazon, and on Audible.If you know someone who might find our career guide helpful, you can get a free copy se...

4 Sep 20234h 41min

#162 – Mustafa Suleyman on getting Washington and Silicon Valley to tame AI

#162 – Mustafa Suleyman on getting Washington and Silicon Valley to tame AI

Mustafa Suleyman was part of the trio that founded DeepMind, and his new AI project is building one of the world's largest supercomputers to train a large language model on 10–100x the compute used to...

1 Sep 202359min

#161 – Michael Webb on whether AI will soon cause job loss, lower incomes, and higher inequality — or the opposite

#161 – Michael Webb on whether AI will soon cause job loss, lower incomes, and higher inequality — or the opposite

"Do you remember seeing these photographs of generally women sitting in front of these huge panels and connecting calls, plugging different calls between different numbers? The automated version of th...

23 Aug 20233h 30min

#160 – Hannah Ritchie on why it makes sense to be optimistic about the environment

#160 – Hannah Ritchie on why it makes sense to be optimistic about the environment

"There's no money to invest in education elsewhere, so they almost get trapped in the cycle where they don't get a lot from crop production, but everyone in the family has to work there to just stay a...

14 Aug 20232h 36min

#159 – Jan Leike on OpenAI's massive push to make superintelligence safe in 4 years or less

#159 – Jan Leike on OpenAI's massive push to make superintelligence safe in 4 years or less

In July, OpenAI announced a new team and project: Superalignment. The goal is to figure out how to make superintelligent AI systems aligned and safe to use within four years, and the lab is putting a ...

7 Aug 20232h 51min

We now offer shorter 'interview highlights' episodes

We now offer shorter 'interview highlights' episodes

Over on our other feed, 80k After Hours, you can now find 20-30 minute highlights episodes of our 80,000 Hours Podcast interviews. These aren’t necessarily the most important parts of the interview, a...

5 Aug 20236min

#158 – Holden Karnofsky on how AIs might take over even if they're no smarter than humans, and his 4-part playbook for AI risk

#158 – Holden Karnofsky on how AIs might take over even if they're no smarter than humans, and his 4-part playbook for AI risk

Back in 2007, Holden Karnofsky cofounded GiveWell, where he sought out the charities that most cost-effectively helped save lives. He then cofounded Open Philanthropy, where he oversaw a team making b...

31 Jul 20233h 13min

#157 – Ezra Klein on existential risk from AI and what DC could do about it

#157 – Ezra Klein on existential risk from AI and what DC could do about it

In Oppenheimer, scientists detonate a nuclear weapon despite thinking there's some 'near zero' chance it would ignite the atmosphere, putting an end to life on Earth. Today, scientists working on AI t...

24 Jul 20231h 18min

Populært innen Fakta

fastlegen
dine-penger-pengeradet
relasjonspodden-med-dora-thorhallsdottir-kjersti-idem
foreldreradet
treningspodden
rss-strid-de-norske-borgerkrigene
mikkels-paskenotter
rss-bisarr-historie
jakt-og-fiskepodden
rss-sunn-okonomi
sinnsyn
rss-kunsten-a-leve
hverdagspsyken
tomprat-med-gunnar-tjomlid
rss-bak-luftfarten
fryktlos
ukast
rss-mind-body-podden
level-up-med-anniken-binz
rss-kull