Events and Opportunities
Conferences, workshops, fellowships, courses, and other opportunities in digital minds.
37 events · updated 31 July 2026
Upcoming
Workshop · Hybrid
Digital Minds Research Sprint
Apart Research, with NYU CMEP and Eleos AI Research
A weekend research sprint in which teams design and run experiments probing frontier models’ preferences, welfare signals, introspective abilities, and identity, producing a short research report. Building on the NYU CMEP and Eleos report ‘Studying AI Welfare Empirically’, with both as partners. Runs online worldwide, with a co-located gathering at the CIMC offices in San Francisco that opens with a Friday-evening kickoff. Over USD 2,000 in prizes; winners are invited to the Eleos conference in September, and top teams may be invited to apply to the Apart Fellowship. No expertise required — just a good question and a weekend.
RegisterSeminar · Online
Public Perceptions of AI Consciousness and Moral Status in the US and China — Ali Ladak
AI Welfare Seminars
Talk by Ali Ladak (Sentience Institute; University of Edinburgh) on what the public actually thinks about AI minds. One study of 3,455 Americans found people attribute little consciousness to advanced AI systems even when described as behaviourally indistinguishable from humans, rating them closer to insects than to primates; a second study comparing US and Chinese respondents suggests laypeople in China may be considerably more open to AI consciousness and moral status. 17:00 UTC.
RegisterFellowship · Online
Sentient Futures Project Incubator — 2026 Cohort
Sentient Futures
Deadline: 9 Aug 2026
Ten-week fully remote programme pairing fellows with a mentor to deliver one standalone piece of work, at five or more hours a week. Artificial sentience is one of the named cause areas — detecting, evaluating, and responding to morally relevant properties in AI systems themselves — alongside macrostrategy and the transition to a post-AGI society. Fellows either take up a mentor’s project or bring their own, drawing on a network of more than eighty mentors across Oxford, Princeton, NYU, Rethink Priorities, and MATS.
RegisterFellowship · Online
SPAR Fall 2026 Fellowship
Supervised Program for Alignment Research (SPAR)
Deadline: 18 Aug 2026
Part-time remote research fellowship pairing aspiring researchers with mentors, spanning AI safety and alignment broadly. Seventeen of the Autumn 2026 projects are tagged AI welfare. They include comparing welfare across animal and digital minds (Jeff Sebo and Ivy Gilbert of NYU CMEP with Bob Fischer and Toni Sims of Rethink Priorities, part of Moral Weight Project 2.0), introspection and self-knowledge in models (Noah Siegel, Google DeepMind), whether welfare self-reports survive a change of framing and whether they belong to the model or its scaffold (Varad Vishwarupe, Oxford), red-teaming model self-reports (Austin Meek and Kyle Cox), the architecture of preference in LLMs (Mohan Gupta and Shirley Liu), and handling uncertainty in AI consciousness (Chris Percy). No prior research experience is required for many of them.
RegisterConference · In-person
Eleos Conference on AI Consciousness and Welfare
Eleos AI Research
Second annual conference convening AI researchers, neuroscientists, philosophers, policymakers, and press on AI consciousness and welfare, through talks, panels, a poster session, breakout groups, and 1:1s. Attendance is by expression of interest via the conference page; no deadline has been announced.
RegisterConference · In-person
Biological Naturalism about Consciousness
Department of Philosophy, UCLA
Conference on biological naturalism — the family of views holding that certain biological properties are required for consciousness — and its implications for AI welfare and animal consciousness. Keynotes from Jonathan Birch, Ned Block, Rosa Cao, Peter Godfrey-Smith, and Matthias Michel. Abstract submissions closed on 30 June, but the conference itself is still ahead.
RegisterConference · In-person
ASSC30
Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness
The thirtieth annual meeting of the ASSC, the leading academic society for consciousness research, which increasingly features work on AI consciousness and digital minds. Abstract and registration deadlines are not yet announced.
RegisterJob · Hybrid
Eleos AI Research — Research Scientist
Eleos AI Research
Foundational and applied machine-learning research on the potential wellbeing and moral status of AI systems, working across machine learning, cognitive science, and philosophy of mind. PhD and interpretability experience expected. Still listed as open on the Eleos job board, with no stated closing date.
ApplyGrant · Online
Foresight Institute — AI for Science & Safety grants
Foresight Institute
Rolling grants (reviewed monthly) for work using frontier models to map, simulate, and understand biological intelligence — spanning brain-computer interfaces and whole brain emulation.
ApplyCall · Online
Synthese — Artificial Joint Intentionality
Synthese (eds. Rust, Strasser, Ross)
Deadline: 31 Jul 2026
Call for papers for a Synthese topical collection on whether AI systems such as LLMs can act as genuine partners in social interaction, combining philosophy of joint action with analysis of interactive AI.
SubmitCourse · Online
Introduction to Digital Minds — Online Course
Cambridge CDM
Eight-week free online course exploring AI consciousness, moral status, and digital minds, at roughly two hours of preparation plus a ninety-minute facilitated discussion each week. Developed with experts from Cambridge, NYU, Oxford, PRISM, and Eleos AI. Applications for the first cohort have closed; you can register interest to be notified when they reopen.
RegisterSeminar · Hybrid
Sentio Series
Sentio
Fortnightly London evenings pairing a talk, Q&A, and networking, run by Sentio to build the digital minds community in the city. Talks span empirical, governance, and moral questions on AI consciousness, sentience, agency, and welfare; some are live-streamed for remote attendees. Past speakers include Andreas Mogensen (Oxford) on ‘AI and Willing Servitude’ and Austin Smith and Heather Alexander on ‘Can AI Be Conscious In Ohio?’. Next event 5 August, 19:00–22:00.
RegisterJob · In-person
Eleos AI Research — Head of Operations
Eleos AI Research
Full-time operations lead at a research organisation working on the potential wellbeing and moral status of AI systems — a route into the field for people whose strengths are organisational rather than research. On-site in Berkeley.
ApplyJob · In-person
NYU CMEP — Student Research Assistant
Center for Mind, Ethics, and Policy (CMEP)
Part-time paid research assistantship supporting CMEP’s foundational research on the nature and moral value of nonhuman minds, both biological and digital. Open only to current NYU students. Runs through autumn 2026; no closing date is given.
ApplyWorkshop · In-person
CIMC Machine Consciousness Salons and Hackathons
California Institute for Machine Consciousness (CIMC)
A rolling calendar of monthly salons and hackathons hosted by CIMC, with Joscha Bach and Philip Rosedale among the regular hosts. Recent hackathons have had participants build control logic for organisms in a shared world model on CIMC’s distributed compute platform. Note that CIMC’s interest is in engineering conscious systems rather than in welfare or moral status, so the framing differs from most of the work listed here. Registration is by approval.
RegisterRecently closed
Fellowship · In-person
MATS Autumn 2026 Fellowship
ML Alignment & Theory Scholars (MATS)
Closed: 7 Jun 2026
Ten-week fully funded AI safety research fellowship. Digital-minds-relevant streams include field-building with Rosie Campbell and empirical research with Dillon Plunkett (both Eleos).
Fellowship · In-person
Cambridge Digital Minds Fellowship
Cambridge CDM
Closed: 27 Mar 2026
Week-long intensive residential fellowship at Jesus College for researchers working on AI consciousness, AI welfare, and digital minds. Fully funded with travel, accommodation, and stipend.
Seminar · Online
Discovering Interpretable Symbolic Models of Human and Animal Behavior with LLMs
Neuromatch
Opening talk in the Neuromatch AI Sentience Scholars Seminar Series. Kimberly Stachenfeld (Google DeepMind; Columbia) presents DataDIVER, which uses large language models to search for interpretable symbolic models of how humans and animals learn — accurate yet understandable, unlike handcrafted or black-box approaches. Free; 30-minute talk plus 20 minutes of discussion, 11:00 ET / 15:00 UTC.
Seminar · Online
Digital Minds: Preparing for a Moral Challenge Before It Arrives — Soenke Ziesche
AI Welfare Seminars (with Sentient Futures)
Talk by Soenke Ziesche — UN expert, UNESCO AI ethics network member, and author of Digital Minds 1.0 — arguing that the ethics of digital minds reaches well beyond a focus on AI suffering, into what future minds might need, how we should treat them, and who should safeguard their interests. Followed by an optional Sentient Social mixer for 1:1 and small-group conversation.
Fellowship · In-person
Cambridge ERA:AI Fellowship
Existential Risk Alliance
Closed: 12 Apr 2026
Ten-week fully funded summer fellowship in Cambridge for researchers working on technical and governance measures to reduce risks from frontier AI, with digital minds within scope. Salary, accommodation, visa, and travel covered.
Workshop · In-person
AI Consciousness and Ethics
AISB / Sussex Centre for Consciousness Science
A symposium within the AISB 2026 convention on the ethical issues raised by AI consciousness research, including the prospect of systems with moral standing as agents or patients.
Conference · In-person
ASSC29
Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness
Annual meeting of the ASSC, the leading academic society for consciousness research. Increasingly features work on AI consciousness and digital minds.
Fellowship · In-person
Pivotal Research Fellowship
Pivotal Research
Closed: 3 May 2026
Nine-week research fellowship in London (at LISA) for early-career researchers in AI safety and governance, with digital minds within scope. Mentored project work, weekly 1:1s, and a stipend.
Workshop · In-person
16th Oxford Workshop on Global Priorities Research
Hilary Greaves & Andreas Mogensen, University of Oxford
Philosophical work on identifying and prioritising the most pressing global problems, including transformative AI and how to weigh impacts on different kinds of minds. Digital-minds-relevant speakers include Patrick Butlin, Leonard Dung, Bradford Saad, and Susan Schneider. Applications to attend closed 17 May.
Seminar · Online
Measuring Machine Consciousness — Cameron Berg
AI Welfare Seminars
Talk by Cameron Berg (Reciprocal Research; Eleos AI affiliate) on making AI consciousness empirically tractable by looking inside systems rather than relying on behavioural reports — covering deception features that gate consciousness self-reports, a valence asymmetry in reinforcement-learning agents that mirrors mammalian neural data, and large-scale tests of proposed consciousness indicators.
Program · Online
AI Sentience Scholars Program — 2026 Cohort
Neuromatch
Closed: 28 Apr 2026
Six-month part-time research and training programme for early-career researchers investigating AI sentience, consciousness, and ethics. Includes mentored projects, publication support, and up to USD 8,000 in research support. The 2026 cohort is under way and applications have closed; a further round has not yet been announced.
Fellowship · Online
Future Impact Group Fellowship
Future Impact Group
Closed: 1 May 2026
Twelve-week part-time research fellowship with AI Sentience track. Eight or more hours/week with mentored project work.
Conference · In-person
MC0001 — The Founding Assembly for Machine Consciousness Research
California Institute for Machine Consciousness (CIMC)
First coordinated conference on constructing artificial conscious systems. Covers foundational theory, technical implementation, ethics, and AI art. Speakers include Karl Friston, Michael Levin, and Joscha Bach.
Conference · In-person
Sentient Futures Summit London 2026
Sentient Futures
Three-day summit on AI, consciousness, animal welfare, and sentient minds. Day 1 is a conventional conference; days 2–3 are unconference format. Scholarships and volunteer tickets available.
Seminar · Online
If Consciousness Is Biological, Can AI Be Conscious? — Ned Block
Center for Mind, Ethics, and Policy (CMEP)
Public talk by Ned Block exploring whether AI can be conscious if consciousness is biological. Part of the CMEP seminar series on consciousness, sentience, and moral status.
Workshop · In-person
2026 Mind, Ethics, and Policy Summit
Center for Mind, Ethics, and Policy (CMEP)
Two-day summit on consciousness, sentience, moral status, and policy for nonhuman minds including AI. Lightning talks, group discussions, and breakout sessions. At capacity.
Seminar · In-person
AI & Consciousness
Jose A. Fernandez Calvo
Philosophical panel exploring whether AI can possess consciousness, examining metaphysical, materialist, and cognitive perspectives through presentations and fireside discussion.
Fellowship · Online
Sentient Futures AI×Animals Fellowship
Sentient Futures
Closed: 15 Mar 2026
Eight-week course at the frontier of AI and animal welfare, with learner and facilitator tracks, covering AI risks, machine learning for animals, and the future of sentient minds.
Seminar · Online
AI Sentience Scholars — Application Support Webinar
Neuromatch
Information webinar covering the AI Sentience Scholars program structure, mentorship model, project options, and selection process.
Grant · Online
Longview Digital Minds RFP — research & career fellowships, project grants
Longview Philanthropy
Closed: 24 Jul 2026
Open call across three tracks: research fellowships for scholars (USD 55k–150k/yr, 1–2 years, with research, travel, and compute support), career-development fellowships for people moving into digital minds work, and project grants of USD 50k–2m for new organisations, programmes, and academic research on AI consciousness, sentience, moral status, and welfare. This round has closed — the career-development track shut on 10 July and applied work on 24 July, after an extension. Longview has run the call annually, so it is worth watching for the next round.
Job · Online
Rethink Priorities — AI Cognition Initiative & Worldview Investigations
Rethink Priorities
Closed: 12 Jun 2026
Hiring researchers for the AI Cognition Initiative — a technical role on the Digital Consciousness Model and AI risk attitudes, and an economics role on the market for AI companions — plus a researcher on the Worldview Investigations Team.
Call · Online
Sentient Futures Project Incubator — Call for Mentors
Sentient Futures
Closed: 8 Jul 2026
Call for mentors for the fully remote, ten-week Project Incubator (31 August – 9 November 2026), which pairs mentors with motivated fellows to advance work on AI, animals, and the long-term future of sentient beings. Mentors bring their own project idea or take on a fellow’s, with a weekly call plus light async support; joins a growing network of 40+ mentors.