I won the 2025 Berggruen Prize Essay Competition for "The Mythology of Conscious AI" - read it now in Noema.
Scientist, Author, Speaker
The science of consciousness
Understanding the biological basis of conscious experience is one of the great challenges for 21st Century Science. Check out my essay The Mythology of Conscious AI, which won the 2025 Berggruen Prize Essay Competition.
A 2021 Book of the Year (New Statesman, Economist, Bloomberg, Five Books), a 2021 Science Book of the Year (Guardian, Financial Times). Being You is out now in hardback, paperback, ebook, and audio.
Interviews and conversations.
Academic and public engagement projects.
What’s coming up and what’s happened.
Consciousness at TED
Your brain hallucinates your conscious reality
My main-stage TED talk has more than 15 million views.
The call for commentary proposals for my new paper 'Conscious artificial intelligence and biological naturalism' is now open at BBS. Deadline is June 12th.
"Inside the big bet on consciousness". My take on the adversarial collaboration between two consciousness theories, in Nautilus.
What gives meaning to life? I asked my Mum .. in today's Guardian (along with 14 others)
"A science of consciousness beyond pseudo-science and pseudo-consciousness" Our comment (Àlex Gómez-Marin & me) on the IIT clash; out now in Nature Neuroscience.
I'm delighted to make the Clarivate 'Highly Cited' researcher list, for the fifth year running - along with 5 other Sussex academics:
New paper in PLoS Biology on the ethics of brain-computer interfaces for cognitive enhancment - with Emma Gordon.
In Austin during SXSW, we celebrated the 2025 Berggruen Prize Essay Competition winners and their bold ideas shaping the future of consciousness and AI.
Featuring Anil Seth, Xin Huang, and Xiaoben Liu—whose essays challenge and expand how we think about mind, language, and
In-depth piece in @nytimes - out yesterday - all about the neuroscience detecting covert consciousness after brain injury, and the ethics of communicating with these patients. Featuring (of course) the pioneering work of @Comadork @CIFAR_News
I'm thrilled (in a slightly bittersweet way) to be on my way to @TEDTalks today, for the final meeting of the @TEDchris era, and for the last time in beautiful Vancouver. I'll be taking the stage on Wednesday 15/4 🙂