Mentees will research questions about AI consciousness and turn their findings into rigorous, original, and accessible essays for an audience of AI safety, governance, and policy researchers.
About the project
Mentees will choose a focused question, review relevant philosophical and scientific literature, develop an original argument, and produce a publication-ready essay. Those who progress quickly may complete multiple essays.
Possible topics include: Analysis of a particular theory of consciousness, comparison of popular theories of consciousness, responses to relevant philosophical thought experiments, review of a relevant influential book or paper.
I will help mentees select tractable questions, find relevant literature, develop robust arguments, and improve their writing. For strong essays, I will guide and support mentees who want to publish their work on my substack or another suitable platform.
Theory of change
As AI systems become more capable, human-like, and embedded in daily life, questions about their capacities and moral status will become increasingly relevant to AI development and governance. Mistakes in either direction are costly: we may fail to protect conscious systems from suffering, or we may waste scarce attention and resources on systems that only appear conscious.
This project contributes to AI safety in three ways. First, it advances foundational research on AI consciousness by developing frameworks that draw on interdisciplinary work. Second, it helps address the talent bottleneck by training mentees to conduct rigorous research and communicate clearly with decision-makers, building capacity in an important but neglected area. Third, it produces practical outputs that can help AI researchers and policymakers design evaluations, decide when further investigation is warranted, and develop proportionate welfare safeguards.
Public writing can help researchers and policymakers understand the evidence, compare different views, and make informed decisions despite ongoing uncertainty. The project is also well-positioned to influence relevant audiences. My Substack is read by policy leads and technical AI safety researchers at frontier labs, AI welfare researchers, members of Anthropic’s editorial team, and AI policy researchers at organizations including IAPS, Horizon, Forethought, and GovAI. This gives the work a direct channel to people who will shape how AI consciousness is evaluated and governed.
Your role
Mentees will have substantial autonomy. They will choose a focused research question, either independently or from a list of topics I provide. My role at this stage will be to help them scope the question so that it is tractable, relevant to AI consciousness, and likely to produce a useful essay.
Once the question is set, mentees will lead the core research and writing. They will review the relevant literature, develop the central argument, and draft the essay. I will support this work by suggesting literature, giving feedback on research plans, challenging unclear or unsupported claims, and helping them strengthen the structure of their arguments.
I will be most hands-on during project selection, argument development, and final editing. For strong essays aimed at publication, I will also act as an editor. Strong mentees may pursue multiple essays with increasing independence.
Prerequisites
Applicants should have:
- Independent judgment and strong convictions about what matters morally and epistemically in this space.
- Willingness to work on open-ended questions where there may be no settled answer, and to decide what the right approach is even if others disagree.
- A pragmatic orientation: applicants should care about producing useful, decision-relevant work, not only exploring abstract questions.
- Some familiarity with the space, including what the biggest questions and bottlenecks are, and why they have not yet been solved.
Application question(s)
1. Submit a writing sample that demonstrates your writing ability and style. It does not need to concern AI consciousness. Briefly explain what the piece does well and what you would improve.
(You can answer the following questions in bullet point format)
2. Choose one of the following claims and present the strongest arguments both for and against it (300–500 words): • If an LLM behaves as if it is conscious, we have good reasons to believe it is in fact conscious. • Some beings very different from humans display intelligence; therefore, some beings very different from humans must be conscious. Conclude with your own view and explain what evidence might change your mind.
3. What is one piece of writing about AI consciousness or AI welfare that you think is particularly good, and why?
About the mentor
I’m an independent researcher working on AI consciousness. I write Maria’s Room, a Substack for people making decisions about AI, including AI safety researchers and policymakers. I’m also a scientific grants advisor for the Foresight Institute and a course facilitator for BlueDot Impact.
Previously, I was a research affiliate at the Global Priorities Institute and research assistant at Google DeepMind working on AI consciousness, and a winter fellow at GovAI, where I worked on loss-of-control risk management. I'm one of the contributors to whenaiseemsconscious.org a guide written with Jeff Sebo, Lucius Caviola, Bradford Saad, Derek Shiller and others, and reviewed by Nick Bostrom, Patrick Butlin, Robert Long, and Rosie Campbell. I studied physics at UCL, maths at Cambridge, and philosophy at Oxford.