Intelligence, Consciousness, and the Future of the Mind

During the first four days we have seen how intelligence and “minded” behaviour have a long history on our planet: They occur in naturally evolved nervous systems, in self-organizing groups of individuals and now apparently even in “artificial” or postbiotic systems. Our own cultural environment is changing dramatically, because AI is rapidly shaping the human mind itself and disrupting our societies. Are we all beginning to have social hallucinations? Is synthetic phenomenology, “artificial consciousness”, actually possible? What is the ethics of intelligence, consciousness, and mind – and do current political institutions have any chance of controlling the process?