Resumen del episodio
What if the biggest moral mistake of our time is failing to recognize the minds around us? Philosopher Jeff Sebo, author of The Moral Circle, joins Sentience to explore one of the most consequential questions of our time: who deserves moral consideration? We discuss why the scientific case for animal consciousness has grown so strong, why fish and invertebrates are often overlooked, and how humans have repeatedly underestimated the minds of other species. But the implications extend far beyond animals. As AI systems become increasingly sophisticated, could we be creating new kinds of minds whose capacity for suffering we don't yet understand? Should we take AI welfare seriously before we know whether machines are conscious? And what happens when the technologies we develop to replace animal experiments raise similar ethical questions of their own? We also examine whether animal experiments deliver the benefits we assume they do, how we can make ethical decisions under scientific uncertainty, and why future…
What if the biggest moral mistake of our time is failing to recognize the minds around us? Philosopher Jeff Sebo, author of The Moral Circle, joins Sentience to explore one of the most consequential questions of our time: who deserves moral consideration? We discuss why the scientific case for animal consciousness has grown so strong, why fish and invertebrates are often overlooked, and how humans have repeatedly underestimated the minds of other species. But the implications extend far beyond animals. As AI systems become increasingly sophisticated, could we be creating new kinds of minds whose capacity for suffering we don't yet understand? Should we take AI welfare seriously before we know whether machines are conscious? And what happens when the technologies we develop to replace animal experiments raise similar ethical questions of their own? We also examine whether animal experiments deliver the benefits we assume they do, how we can make ethical decisions under scientific uncertainty, and why future…
Episodios
19. AI and Animal Consciousness, and the Future of Ethics with Jeff Sebo, PhD
EscuchadoWhat if the biggest moral mistake of our time is failing to recognize the minds around us? Philosopher Jeff Sebo, author of The Moral Circle, joins Sentience to explore one of the most consequential questions of our time: who deserves moral consideration? We discuss why the scientific case for animal consciousness has grown so strong, why fish and invertebrates are often overlooked, and how humans have repeatedly underestimated the minds of other species. But the implications extend far beyond animals. As AI systems become increasingly sophisticated, could we be creating new kinds of minds whose capacity for suffering we don't yet understand? Should we take AI welfare seriously before we know whether machines are conscious? And what happens when the technologies we develop to replace animal experiments raise similar ethical questions of their own? We also examine whether animal experiments deliver the benefits we assume they do, how we can make ethical decisions under scientific uncertainty, and why future…
18. Do Elephants Have Names? The Hidden Minds of Animals with Mickey Pardo, PhD
EscuchadoWhat if we’ve been dramatically underestimating what it’s like to be another animal? In this episode of Sentience, animal cognition researcher Mickey Pardo, PhD takes us inside the minds of other animals—from woodpeckers that track relationships between other birds to elephants that appear to use name-like calls to address one another. We explore how scientists can investigate the private mental lives of animals, what the famous mirror test actually tells us about self-awareness, and why humans have repeatedly moved the goalposts whenever another species demonstrates an ability we once thought was uniquely ours. We also dive into the future of animal communication: could AI uncover hidden patterns in the vocalizations of elephants, dolphins, and whales that humans have completely missed? And if animals have richer inner lives than we've assumed, what does that mean for how we understand intelligence, consciousness, and our relationship with the other minds sharing the planet with us? Chapters/timestamps…
17. Bruno Olshausen, PhD on how the brain compresses, sees, and makes sense of the world
EscuchadoIn this episode of Sentience, Bruno Olshausen, PhD, professor at UC Berkeley, tells the story of how he went from wanting to build brain-like robots to uncovering one of neuroscience's most surprising results. Early in his career, he and a collaborator showed that if you train a simple computer model to represent images as efficiently as possible, it spontaneously reinvents the same kind of visual "building blocks" found in real brains—a discovery almost nobody believed at first. Olshausen walks us through why the brain seems to prefer having most of its neurons sit quietly at any given moment, why this looks so different from how modern AI vision systems work, and why brains might not be "efficient" so much as bound by the same physical limits as everything else. We also get into why the brain sends information as sudden spikes rather than smooth signals, and what all of this might mean for building truly autonomous machines. Timestamps(00:00) – Welcome to Sentience and meeting Bruno Olshausen(00:41) – From…
16. Yi-Li Wu, PhD on the forgotten global history of anesthesia
EscuchadoIn this episode of Sentience, Yi-Li Wu, PhD, Associate Professor of History and Women's and Gender Studies at the University of Michigan, explores the overlooked history of anesthesia and pain management. We discuss medieval Chinese surgical practices, herbal anesthetics, and the transmission of medical knowledge across centuries and cultures. Wu explains how physicians balanced the therapeutic and toxic effects of powerful plants, why much of this knowledge was passed down orally rather than written, and how modern narratives of scientific discovery often obscure the broader global networks behind medicine. The conversation also explores traumatic injuries, military medicine, and what the history of anesthesia reveals about how humans everywhere have confronted pain, surgery, and healing. Chapters / Timestamps (00:00) – Welcome to Sentience and meeting Yi-Li Wu(01:02) – From women’s history to the history of Chinese medicine(07:18) – Traumatic injuries and the problem of unwritten medical knowledge(10:30) –…
15. Osh Agabi on wetware, biological sensing, and the future of living machines
EscuchadoIn this episode of Sentience, Osh Agabi, CEO of Koniku Inc., explores what happens when technology is built not just with silicon, but with living biology. We discuss his journey from growing up in Lagos to leading efforts in “wetware computing,” where engineered biological systems are designed to sense, adapt, and solve problems in the real world. Agabi explains how biological chips can smell their environment, why embodiment and sensing may be essential for intelligence, and why many traditional brain–machine approaches miss something fundamental. He also reflects on failure, engineering rigor, ethics, and what it means to build machines that might one day learn and evolve alongside us. Timestamps (00:00) – Welcome to Sentience and meeting Osh Agabi(10:00) – From robotics in Europe to early machine learning(17:23) – What AI can’t do yet and current limits(19:09) – Building next-generation neural electrode chips(35:35) – Toward embodied systems and artificial “brains”(40:26) – Ambition, rigor, and…