Stiles-Nicholson Brain Institute
Center for the Future of AI, Mind & Society
The Center for the Future of AI, Mind & Society (AIMS) is a multi-disciplinary hub where thought leaders in philosophy, complex systems, artificial intelligence, neuroscience, political science, and other fields come together to analyze vital scientific, societal, and ethical issues.
The Center explores questions like the following:
• How does machine intelligence compare to human intelligence? And how can these distinct intelligences best work together?
• What is the nature of the self, mind and consciousness?
• What are the epistemic strengths and weaknesses of today’s large language models (LLMs)?
• What will it mean to be human when we all carry the equivalent of a polymath in our pockets?
Our annual conference, MindFest, features thought leaders from academe, business and policy, treating topics central to the future of AI. See the MindFest 2025 Playlist created by our partner, Closer to Truth.
The Center is directed by Susan Schneider, the William F. Dietrich Distinguished Professor at Florida Atlantic University, former NASA Chair, and Distinguished Scholar at the Library of Congress. Its Associate Director is Mark Bailey, a Research Affiliate Professor in Florida Atlantic University's College of Engineering and Computer Science and the Co-Founder of DataField Intelligence. Elan Barenholtz is the Center's Assistant Director, an associate professor at Charles E. Schmidt College of Science, and Co-Director of the Machine Perception and Cognitive Robotics (MPCR) Lab.
The Center is a collaboration between the Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters and the Stiles-Nicholson Brain Institute.
“The systems are essentially crowdsourced neocortex... As the systems scale up and their data increases, they evolve better and develop more humanlike capabilities,” said Dr. Schneider.
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A conversation with Dr. Susan Schneider on the AI risks we're not talking about and why the fixation on AGI is misplaced.
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Tam Hunt discusses GRT, which explores how synchronized oscillations—from the quantum level to whole-brain dynamics—give rise to conscious experience.
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AI is sparking unprecedented claims about machine minds, but are today's systems really conscious?
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Dr. Schneider distinguishes consciousness from intelligence, introduces her ACT test as a "zombie filter" for detecting genuine machine experience.
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Mark Bailey and Robert Lawrence Kuhn discuss the future of morality on Closer To Truth.
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Conscious moments are generated by the formation of quantum superpositions, challenging traditional views on the origins of consciousness.
Ben Goertzel speaking at Center Mindfest 2023.
Stephen Wolfram speaking at Center Mindfest 2023.
Eliezer Yudkowsky discusses his rationale for ceasing the development of AIs more sophisticated than GPT-4.
Yoshua Bengio speaking at Center for the Future of AI, Mind & Society.
Jonathan Schooler presents a framework for understanding consciousness as a hierarchy of information-processing modules integrated through nested rhythms.
