Conferences, symposia, and conversations exploring the psychological and cultural consequences of artificial intelligence.
A Nature-journal-affiliated conference in Beijing (Nov 5-7, 2026), organized with Peking University and Chinese brain-research institutes, examining how AI intersects with human cognition, mental health, and cultural evolution.
A two-day philosophy conference at UCLA (November 5-6, 2026) examining whether biological properties are necessary for consciousness, with direct implications for debates over whether AI systems could have moral status.
A conference at the University of Warwick examining relationality and reflexivity in human-AI interaction, including questions of trust, agency, and reciprocity as AI systems become embedded in human relationships and everyday practices.
A three-day summit in San Francisco (March 12-14, 2027) bringing together AI researchers, philosophers, and welfare advocates to address ethics, consciousness, and governance questions around both animal and potentially sentient artificial minds.
A two-day academic workshop at Radboud University (Nijmegen, Netherlands) on how AI systems that mediate whose testimony counts as credible affect epistemic justice, covering algorithmic bias, testimonial and hermeneutical injustice, and epistemic trust, with applications in medicine, education, law, and policy.
A one-day conference in Ann Arbor covering AI's current impact on mental health and wellbeing, evidence-based vs. speculative clinical applications, and how AI in mental health should be governed.
The ACM's annual interdisciplinary conference on collective intelligence, running September 27-30, 2026 at Virginia Tech's Washington, D.C. campus, with this year's theme 'Connections' examining how humans, AI systems, and communities shape one another's thinking. It is co-located with the 2026 ACM Conference on Human-AI Complementarity and Alignment (HCOMP).
A three-day conference in Berkeley (September 18-20, 2026) convening researchers, academics, and policymakers to discuss AI welfare and consciousness research, building on the field's first dedicated conference held in late 2025.
An interdisciplinary one-day symposium in Halifax on how advances in AI, cognitive science, and neuroscience inform one another, with keynotes on tool use, creativity in humans vs. foundation models, and reasoning.
A two-day workshop at Cambridge University (Aug 8-9, 2026) on neglected governance questions about how society should prepare for the possibility of digital minds with moral status.
A philosophy workshop at the University of Luxembourg, part of the FNR-funded 'Epistemology of AI Systems' project, examining philosophical issues at the intersection of AI, epistemology, and philosophy of mind.
A two-day interdisciplinary seminar at the University of Southern Denmark examining the philosophical and psychological dimensions of AI companionship, including friendship and love with chatbots, AI therapists, grief bots, and impacts on wellbeing and self-cultivation. Held June 10-11, 2026 in Odense, Denmark.
A panel at the CPDP (Computers, Privacy and Data Protection) Conference 2026 on governing emotionally intimate human-AI relationships, organized by researchers from the SENTIMENT project studying how people interact with conversational AI in emotionally sensitive contexts.
An interdisciplinary workshop in Bologna, Italy bringing together philosophers, cognitive scientists, and technologists to examine questions of mind, cognition, and moral status raised by AI systems.
A hybrid academic conference (online May 4-5, in-person May 6-8 in Porto) on what AI reveals about understanding, intentionality, agency and consciousness, including how AI reshapes human cognition through extended and scaffolded practices like search, writing, and memory.
A philosophy conference at Boston University examining whether generative AI tools ultimately improve or diminish human critical thinking, creativity, and ethical reasoning across professional and intellectual domains.
A large multi-day Duke conference (950+ attendees) on designing, deploying, and governing AI with human values in mind, including a human-AI relationships track alongside broader AI-and-society topics.