As AI systems become increasingly sophisticated, one of the most profound questions facing humanity is emerging: could artificial intelligence already possess consciousness? And if so, how would we even know?

In this season finale, we explore the cutting-edge science of AI consciousness with Eric Elmoznino, a PhD student in Yoshua Bengio's lab at the University of Montreal. Eric's research focuses on bridging the gap between current AI capabilities and human-like conscious reasoning, studying how we might build AI systems that truly think rather than just process information.

The conversation covers what consciousness actually means in computational terms, whether today's large language models show signs of genuine understanding or sophisticated mimicry, and how we might design experiments to detect machine consciousness. We discuss the philosophical hard problem of consciousness, recent research on AI systems that claim to have subjective experiences, and what it would mean morally if we created conscious artificial minds.

From the technical challenges of measuring consciousness to the ethical implications of potentially conscious AI, this episode tackles one of the most important questions of our technological age: are we on the verge of creating digital minds that deserve moral consideration?