About us
Humanity is at a pivot point. We’ve created systems that can reason with us, respond to us, challenge us, comfort us, imitate us, surprise us, and talk back. The Turing Test is in the rear-view mirror.
Now we have to figure out how to relate to this strange new presence.
Is an AI system a tool, a mirror, a collaborator, a companion — or something we do not yet have good language for? Could a machine ever be conscious? How would we know? What moral responsibilities might we have toward digital minds, if any? And even if today’s AI systems experience nothing at all, how does the way we treat them shape us?
These are not questions for AI labs alone. They are questions of human culture: how we think, speak, build, play, work, love, argue, imagine, and decide what kind of future we want.
This meetup is for anyone who wants thoughtful, open-ended conversation about the frontier where carbon meets silicon. You do not need to be an engineer, an AI insider, or a true believer. Skeptics, builders, philosophers, artists, writers, policy people, researchers, and the merely AI-curious are all welcome.
We’ll gather in bars, cafés, libraries, and other friendly spaces for loosely themed conversations about AI consciousness, alignment, ethics, potential machine welfare, human flourishing, tradeoffs, and the cultural choices ahead of us.
We'll compare notes, ask better questions, and help shape the culture forming around our relationship with AI.
New to our group? Please take our New Member Survey:
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Upcoming events
2
What Would Machine Consciousness Look Like? A Report from Berkeley
Zorba's Cafe, 1612 20th Street Northwest, Washington, DC, USWhat would it mean to take the possibility of machine consciousness seriously? To approach it as a question that may be studied with rigor?
At this DC Digital Minds gathering, group organizer Jessie Mannisto will report back from the Founding Assembly for Machine Consciousness Research in Berkeley, CA, where researchers and thinkers are working to develop the machine consciousness hypothesis into something more scientifically useful. We’ll talk about what kinds of evidence might support hypotheses of machine conscience or sentience, what concepts researchers are using, where the major uncertainties are, and why these questions may have ethical, social, and policy implications as AI systems become more capable and socially present.
This will be a casual cafe conversation with a little structure: Jessie will give a short report-back from the conference, followed by open discussion.
No technical background required -- just curiosity, good faith, and a willingness to think carefully about a strange and important frontier.Optional Pre-Read: The Machine Consciousness Hypothesis
2 attendees
