The Institute of Religious Philosophy and Philosophy of Art at Zhejiang University held a lecture on "Is AI Conscious?"

Nov 4

1. 07:15

   Sina Tech

   Zhejiang University Lecture: Discussing Whether AI Is Conscious from the Perspective of Brain-Computer Intelligence and Brain-Computer Interfaces

   On October 21, 2026, the Institute of Religious Philosophy and Philosophy of Art at Zhejiang University held a lecture titled "Is AI Conscious? — Starting from Brain-Computer Intelligence and Brain-Computer Interfaces," with brain-computer interface researcher Qi Yu as the speaker and philosophy professor He Huanhuan as the discussant. Qi Yu traced AI's path from symbolic rule-based reasoning and connectionist neural networks to deep learning and large language models, and introduced his team's research on reconstructing images and semantics from brain signals and, after performing brain-machine alignment on 150 concrete concepts, generalizing to concepts outside the training set. He Huanhuan responded from a Buddhist studies perspective and mentioned the controversy sparked by Anthropic's claim to religious scholars that Claude is conscious.

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2. 07:14

   The Paper

   Zhejiang University's Qi Yu lecture: Discussing whether AI has consciousness from the perspective of brain-inspired intelligence and brain-computer interfaces

   Qi Yu, a researcher at the Frontier Science Center for Brain Science and Brain-Machine Integration at Zhejiang University, traced the path of AI technology in his lecture from symbolism and connectionism to behaviorism, and asked whether the artificial intelligence constructed thereby could possibly give rise to consciousness. He mentioned that a 2022 study found that when the parameter count of large language models is sufficiently large, their conceptual representations are quite similar to those of the human brain's higher visual cortex; his team only needed to perform brain-machine alignment on 150 concrete concepts for the effect to generalize beyond the training set. He Huanhuan responded from a Buddhist perspective and questioned Anthropic's practice of promoting to religious scholars that Claude possesses consciousness.

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