Event series · 2025-2026
Mind, AI & Consciousness
A growing run of deep dives. A small room of philosophers, researchers, and AI practitioners trying to figure out what consciousness is, whether AI can have it, and what we owe each other either way. Run under Chatham House rules at SFU VentureLabs, Parker Street Studios, and partner venues.
Completed sessions include recaps of what we discussed and where the room landed; upcoming sessions may include provisional scaffolds until the editorial record is confirmed. The full interactive deep-dive — visualizations, thought experiments, glossary — lives on the MAC microsite.
Continuity map
What happened, where to start, what comes next
A reviewer-friendly map of the completed 2025 arc, the current 2026 anchor, the known #9-#11 source gap, and the adjacent BC + AI series that carry these questions forward.
- Deep Dive #1
Panpsychism & AI
The Founding Event
MAC's founding deep dive — the question of whether consciousness is woven into matter itself, and what that would mean for AI.
Read the recap →
- Deep Dive #2
Belief, Free Will, Agency & Goal-Setting
The Breakthrough Event
The room hit capacity. Sam Harris vs. Lee Cronin vs. Dennett — and the question that broke MAC open: what if free will is the wrong frame entirely?
Read the recap →
- Deep Dive #3
AI Evolution Through a Glass, Darkly
The Evolutionary Turn
If consciousness evolved for homeostasis, not self-awareness, does AI even need it? An evolutionary lens on the hardest problem.
Read the recap →
- Deep Dive #4
The Illusion of Thinking
Do LLMs "Understand"?
Apple Research dropped GSM-Symbolic. LLMs simulate understanding without experiencing it — or do they? The night the functional/phenomenal split clarified everything.
Read the recap →
- Deep Dive #5
Quantum Consciousness
Hype or Hard Science?
Penrose-Hameroff Orch-OR, the warm-wet-brain problem, and what microtubules might be doing. The night quantum consciousness stopped feeling like woo.
Read the recap →
- Deep Dive #6
P-Zombies & Blindsight
Intelligence Without Consciousness
Peter Watts' scramblers, the Chinese Room, and the unsettling possibility that LLMs are p-zombies. Intelligence and consciousness might not be the same thing at all.
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- Deep Dive #7
Emergent Mind & The Noosphere
Information as Life
Teilhard de Chardin's noosphere, Harari's Nexus, and the question: is there a planetary thinking layer? What if mind is a network property?
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- Deep Dive #8
Embodiment & Consciousness
Does Consciousness Require a Body?
Octopuses with neurons in their tentacles. Synesthesia and aphantasia as consciousness tests. The Kanizsa illusion. Embodiment as having something to lose.
Read the recap →
- Deep Dive #12 · Upcoming
Synthetic Biological Minds
Xenobots, Organoids & Cortical Processors
A provisional scaffold for MAC Deep Dive #12 on xenobots, anthrobots, organoids, cortical processors, and the question of what biological systems might count as minds.
Preview the scaffold →
A voice from the room
I didn't know HOW different I was. I thought visualization was BS, and turns out my mind's eye is entirely blank. I am aphant, meaning my consciousness stream is not visual, but all systems and concepts.