I won the 2025 Berggruen Prize Essay Competition for "The Mythology of Conscious AI" - read it now in Noema.
Scientist, Author, Speaker
The science of consciousness
Understanding the biological basis of conscious experience is one of the great challenges for 21st Century Science. Check out my essay The Mythology of Conscious AI, which won the 2025 Berggruen Prize Essay Competition.
A 2021 Book of the Year (New Statesman, Economist, Bloomberg, Five Books), a 2021 Science Book of the Year (Guardian, Financial Times). Being You is out now in hardback, paperback, ebook, and audio.
Interviews and conversations.
Academic and public engagement projects.
What’s coming up and what’s happened.
Consciousness at TED
Your brain hallucinates your conscious reality
My main-stage TED talk has more than 15 million views.
The call for commentary proposals for my new paper 'Conscious artificial intelligence and biological naturalism' is now open at BBS. Deadline is June 12th.
"Inside the big bet on consciousness". My take on the adversarial collaboration between two consciousness theories, in Nautilus.
What gives meaning to life? I asked my Mum .. in today's Guardian (along with 14 others)
"A science of consciousness beyond pseudo-science and pseudo-consciousness" Our comment (Àlex Gómez-Marin & me) on the IIT clash; out now in Nature Neuroscience.
I'm delighted to make the Clarivate 'Highly Cited' researcher list, for the fifth year running - along with 5 other Sussex academics:
New paper in PLoS Biology on the ethics of brain-computer interfaces for cognitive enhancment - with Emma Gordon.
Sam Harris (@MakingSenseHQ) just dropped Unraveling the Dream.
Beautiful film on the science of psychedelics — featuring the work of @RCarhartHarris, Karl Friston, and @anilkseth.
Watch it before next Tuesday.
On April 28, No Way Out drops our episode with Karl Friston — where
Se disant “agnostique” quant au fonctionnalisme, le neuroscientifique @anilkseth considère que la conscience est une propriété liée à la vie plutôt qu’à l’intelligence. Il définit l’expérience consciente comme une “hallucination contrôlée” : un flux d’hypothèses émises sur ce
"Why AI will never be conscious" my new conversation with the exceptional @CosmicSkeptic. The 'never' in the title is a bit strong - e.g. it depends what we mean by AI - but that's why you should listen to the whole thing 🙂 (& there's bonus piano too)