Eric Schwitzgebel

AI and the Degradation of the Human Capacity for Friendship (guest post by Grace Helton) Part Two of a two-part series by Grace Helton (guest blogger) schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2026/05/ai-and…

ChatGPT Is Not Your Friend: guest post by Grace Helton, at The Splintered Mind schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2026/05/chatgp…

nonpaywalled (?) version: theatlantic.com/technology/202…

From an article yesterday in @TheAtlantic. I agree with Schwitzgebel!

Superhuman Moral Standing (for possible future entities) a blog post suggesting three possible routes: * having much more of what matters * having something that matters far beyond our comprehension * not being individuatable into discrete entities like us [link in comments]

Open access version: academic.oup.com/book/62410

You think you know what belief is? No! At best you have an accidentally true opinion, unless you've read @jontweetshere's and my edited collection, The Nature of Belief, hot off the press at OUP. (Also available open access at OUP's website.)

Could "do your thing" -- harmoniously with the world and reflecting your specific predilections and talents -- serve as a general (Daoist-inspired) ethical motto? In this blog post, I argue yes, but not in a totalizing way. schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2026/04/do-you…

Some thoughts on Kim Stanley Robinson's remarks about the value of science fiction: schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2026/04/kim-st…

@adriarm_ Congratulations!

Going to NYU for my philosophy phd! starting in the fall

@dioscuri @fish_kyle3 Congratulations! It’s great to hear that DeepMind will be drawing on your expertise.

Big personal news: I’ve been recruited by Google DeepMind for a new Philosopher position (actual title), focusing on machine consciousness, human-AI relationships, and AGI readiness, starting in May. I’ll continue my research & teaching at Cambridge part-time. Absolutely stoked!

@Inframethod I know that my friends are conscious! Folk psychology and expert theory warrant a consensus on this point. I think it’s also eminently reasonable to think virtually all adult mammals and birds are.

A question for @eschwitz just occurred to me: Faced with *any* physical object, do you aim to convince me that I cannot know, and the experts cannot know, whether it is conscious? Or is there a particular *kind* of object that should occasion this doubt? What kind?

@realpaulmahler One can always dream!

@eschwitz Perhaps I’m horribly cynical, and I love the enthusiasm, but have you ever observed this happening in the wild? “Or maybe you'll loathe my skeptical stance but grudgingly accept it against your will, due to the force of my arguments!” I do hope this does happen in general.

Last week I submitted my latest book manuscript to Cambridge (for their "Element" series of books about 100 pages long): AI and Consciousness: A Skeptical Overview -- because you haven't heard nearly enough about AI and consciousness recently, of course! ;-) Maybe you'll 1/3

Full citable MS here: arxiv.org/abs/2510.09858

appreciate my skeptical stance, at odds both with boosters who anticipate imminent AI consciousness and with scoffers who pooh-pooh the possibility. Or maybe you'll loathe my skeptical stance but grudgingly accept it against your will, due to the force of my arguments! 2/3

So You're on the "Waiting List" for a Philosophy PhD Program a post of explanation and advice (link in comments)

Hot off the press: "Sacrificing Humans for Insects and AI", a critical review of recent work on animal and AI moral standing, with Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, in Ethics (discusses recent books by Jonathan Birch, @jeffrsebo, and Webb Keane). journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.10…