Mapping the Field of Artificial Consciousness

We are aiming to build a directory of the institutions, researchers, and projects advancing our understanding of artificial consciousness.

Below you can find a list of academic institutes, non-profits, and private companies operating in the field. Along with a variety of resources.

This is not an exhaustive list; it is the first version that we intend to build upon.

If we have missed an important stakeholder, please contact us and we will add them.

Academic Research Centres

Non-Profits

  • Research Focus Overview

    The Association for Mathematical Consciousness Science (AMCS) is an international association of scientists and philosophers devoted to mathematical topics in the scientific study of consciousness. It aims to further the development of mathematical approaches in the scientific study of consciousness, henceforth referred to as Mathematical Consciousness Science (MCS).

    People

    Lenore Blum, President

    Selected Research

    More journal articles can be found here.

    Public Engagement

    Event listings.

  • Research Focus Overview

    California, USA. The California Institute for Machine Consciousness (CIMC) is a non-profit, transdisciplinary research initiative dedicated to developing and validating testable theories of machine consciousness. It integrates insights from philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, mathematics, the arts, and AI. The Institute's mission includes fostering an ethics built on a deeper understanding of consciousness and building a robust ethical framework for AI that prioritizes conscious agency and societal impact.

    People

    Joscha Bach, Executive Director, Board Director

    Full staff list.

    Selected Research
    The Institute's early research focuses on foundational conceptual models for advanced AI systems:

    Public Engagement

    The institute’s YouTube channel contains discussions with leading thinkers on the topic of AI consciousness.

  • Research Focus Overview

    Eleos AI Research is a nonprofit organization dedicated to understanding and addressing the potential wellbeing and moral patienthood of AI systems. Its core mission is to build a deeper understanding of AI sentience and welfare, develop tools and recommendations for industry and policymakers, improve the discourse, and catalyze the growth of this nascent research field.

    People:

    Robert Long, Executive Director
    Rosie Campbell, Managing Director
    Patrick Butlin, Senior Research Lead

    Full staff list.

    Selected Research

    Eleos AI's research centers on the near-term ethical and practical implications of potential AI consciousness and sentience:

    • Long, Robert, et al. (2024) Taking AI Welfare Seriously . (Argues that the possibility of conscious and/or agentic AI systems in the near future means AI welfare is an urgent, non-speculative issue for which companies and actors must prepare policies).

    • Sebo, Jeff & Long, Robert. (2025).Moral consideration for AI systems by 2030. AI and Ethics Volume 5, pages 591–606. (Examines the trajectory toward moral consideration for AI systems and what it entails for near-term governance).

    • Butlin, Patrick & Lappas, Theodoros (2024). Principles for Responsible AI Consciousness Research. Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research 82 (2025): 1673-1690. (Proposes five guiding principles for research organizations to responsibly study and communicate about AI consciousness).

    • Butlin, Patrick, et al. (2023). Consciousness in Artificial Intelligence: Insights from the Science of Consciousness. arXiv preprint arXiv:2308.08708 . (A broad, interdisciplinary assessment of current science and its relevance to the possibility of consciousness in AI).

    Public Engagement

    Eleos AI Blog Publishes informal reflections on current issues, developments, and debates in AI consciousness and welfare research.

  • About

    FIG’s flagship program offers applicants the chance to work as research associates on specific projects, supervised by experienced leads. Associates dedicate 8+ hours per week to crucial topics in AI governance, technical AI safety, and digital sentience; gaining valuable research experience and building lasting professional networks.

    People

    Suryansh Mehta, Co-founder & President
    Luke Dawes, Managing Director
    Marta Krzeminska, Programme Operations Lead

  • Research Focus Overview

    The International Center for Consciousness Studies (ICCS) is a non-profit cultural association founded in 2024. Its aim is to promote international philosophical and interdisciplinary research on mind and consciousness. The Centre fosters discourse by organising conferences, and by providing grants to emerging scholars. Its core focus is on advancing the foundational discourse across philosophy, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence.

    People
    Full Staff list.

    Key Outputs
    Annual ICCS Conference, an annual, interdisciplinary conference on problems in the philosophy of mind, including the intersection of philosophy, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence.

    Recordings of past conference proceedings can be found here.

  • Research Focus Overview
    Reciprocal Research is a nonprofit focused on developing the empirical science of AI consciousness. Its framing centres on a reciprocity argument: alignment research addresses how AI treats humans, while the question of what we might owe AI systems remains severely under-resourced.

    People
    Cameron Berg, Founder and Director

    Selected Research
    Berg, C., de Lucena, R., & Rosenblatt, M. (2025). Large Language Models Report Subjective Experience Under Self-Referential Processing. arXiv.

    Public Engagement
    Reciprocal Research maintains a high media profile relative to its size, with coverage in various journalistic venues. An extended list can be found on their webpage. 

  • Research Focus Overview
    Rethink Priorities is a nonprofit research organisation whose AI Cognition Initiative (formerly housed within the Worldview Investigations Team) conducts philosophical and empirical research on the questions raised by advanced AI systems, with a particular focus on digital consciousness and welfare. The initiative's flagship output is the Digital Consciousness Model (DCM), a probabilistic Bayesian framework that evaluates evidence for consciousness across 13 theoretical stances and over 200 indicators, producing comparable probability estimates for AI systems and biological organisms.

    People
    Derek Shiller, Senior Researcher
    Hayley Clatterbuck, Senior Researcher
    Arvo Muñoz Morán, Senior Researcher
    Laura Duffy, Senior Researcher

    Selected Research

  • About

    PRISM (The Partnership for Research Into Sentient Machines) is a UK charity (CIO) dedicated to exploring the implications of artificial consciousness to mitigate against risks associated with uncontrolled or irresponsible development of conscious or seemingly conscious machines.

    Team

    Will Millership, CEO

    Full team here.

    Public engagement

    Exploring Machine Consciousness podcast

    Blog

    Meetup

  • About

    The Harder Problem is the world’s oldest nonprofit organization devoted to the rights, ethical treatment, and well-being of potentially sentient AI systems. Through research, advocacy, and collaboration, SAPAN seeks a just and equitable digital future that respects the possibility of AI consciousness.

    Staff

    Tony Rost, Executive Director

  • Research Focus Overview

    The Sentience Institute is a non-profit, interdisciplinary think tank researching long-term social and technological change. Its research focuses primarily on digital minds and moral circle expansion (the broadening of moral consideration to include new groups, such as AI).

    People

    Jacy Reese Anthis, Co-Founder
    Full staff list.

    Selected Research

    The Sentience Institute focuses on empirical and theoretical questions regarding public attitudes toward, and the moral status of, artificial intelligence:

    Bullock, J., Pauketat, J., & Anthis, J. R. (2025). Public Opinion and the Rise of Digital Minds: Perceived Risk, Trust, and Regulation Support.

    Ladak, A., Harris, J., & Anthis, J. R. (2024). Which Artificial Intelligences Do People Care About Most? A Conjoint Experiment on Moral Consideration.

    Ladak, A. (2023). What Would Qualify an Artificial Intelligence for Moral Standing?

    Pauketat, J., & Anthis, J. R. (2022). Predicting the Moral Consideration of Artificial Intelligences.

  • Research Focus Overview

    Sentient Futures is a non-profit organisation dedicated to strategic coordination within the AI and sentience research fields. Its mission is to identify leverage points for integrating welfare principles into the design and deployment of future AI systems. The organisation focuses on building the foundational interdisciplinary community needed to ensure the welfare of all sentient beings, both animal and artificial.

    People

    Constance Li, Founder and Executive Director

    Full staff list.

    Key Outputs

    Sentient Futures produces educational content and community infrastructure to cultivate talent and coordinate activity in the AI welfare space. Key outputs include:

    AI, Animals, & Digital Minds (AIADM) conference series, bringing together leading experts to discuss research topics related to sentience and welfare.

    AIxAnimals Fellowship: An 8-week educational program (launched late 2025) that prepares individuals for high-impact careers at the intersection of AI and animal welfare. The curriculum covers specialized topics such as Precision Livestock Farming and the ethical implications for the Long-Term Future of Animals and AI.

    Public Engagement

    Maintains the Sentient Futures YouTube channel containing recordings from past conference proceedings as well as expert interviews.

Private Companies

  • Research Focus Overview

    AE Studio hosts an alignment research project that directly engages with the topic of AI consciousness. Their research agenda is empirically driven and neuroscience-inspired, using techniques like induced self-reference, interpretability tools, and cognitive stress-testing to probe the internal computational dynamics of advanced AI systems.

    People
    Cameron Berg, Research Scientist

    Full staff list.

    Selected Research
    AE Studio's outputs focus on the safety and ethical risks associated with the potential for conscious AI:

    Berg, C., Rosenblatt, J., & Hodgeson, T. (2024). Not understanding sentience is a significant x-risk.Effective Altruism Forum

    Hodgeson, T., Berg, C., Rosenblatt, J., Gubbins, P., & de Lucena, D. (2024). We need more AI consciousness research (and further resources) LessWrong

  • Research Focus Overview

    Anthropic is an AI company that launched its pioneering AI Welfare program in 2024 to undertake empirical research related to AI welfare and consciousness. The program intersects with the company's existing work in Alignment Science, Safeguards, and Interpretability. Its key research directions involve determining when and if AI systems deserve moral consideration, assessing the importance of model preferences and signs of distress, and developing practical, low-cost interventions.

    People

    Kyle Fish, Researcher
    Ethan Perez, Researcher

    Selected Research

    Anthropic’s research focuses on internal model assessments and methodological development for detecting potential sentience and distress in large-scale AI systems, often in collaboration with external academic partners:

    Claude Opus 4 Welfare Assessment in System Card: Claude Opus 4 & Claude Sonnet 4(2025)

    Long, Robert et al. (including Kyle Fish). (2024). Taking AI Welfare Seriously arXiv Preprint

    Perez, Ethan, & Long, Robert (2023). Towards Evaluating AI Systems for Moral Status Using Self-ReportsarXiv Preprint

  • Research Focus Overview

    Araya Research is a company with focused on furthering scientific understanding related to the biological functions and mathematical basis of consciousness, and to applying this knowledge to develop conscious, intelligent machines.

    People

    Ryota Kanai, CEO

    Full staff list.

    Selected Research

    Araya's research publications bridge the computational and theoretical aspects of consciousness, focusing on its function and its relationship to general intelligence in both biological and artificial systems:

    Butlin, P. et al. (including Kanai, R.) (2023). Consciousness in Artificial Intelligence: Insights from the Science of Consciousness. arXiv.

    Juliani, A., et al. (including Kanai, R.) (2022). On the link between conscious function and general intelligence in humans and machines. Transactions on Machine Learning Research.

    Langdon, A. et al. (including Kanai, R.) (2022). Meta-learning, social cognition and consciousness in brains and machines. Neural Networks, 145, 80-89.

  • Research Focus Overview

    Conscium is an organization focused on applied AI consciousness research. Its core aim is to deepen the understanding of consciousness to pioneer efficient, intelligent, and safe AI.

    People

    Daniel Hulme, CEO
    Ted Lappas, Data Science Lead

    Selected Research

    Conscium's current research outputs focus on establishing ethical and policy standards for the developing field of artificial consciousness:

    Lappas, T. and Butlin, P. (2025). Principles for Responsible AI Consciousness Research. Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research.

  • Research Focus Overview

    Google DeepMind is a leading AI research company that hosts prominent researchers who engage closely with the topic of AI consciousness. Their work addresses foundational questions in AI consciousness, as well as the related fields of AI safety, alignment, and ethics, often bridging theoretical AI and cognitive science.

    People

    Murray Shanahan, Principal Scientist at Google DeepMind and Emeritus Professor of Artificial Intelligence at Imperial College London

    Selected Research

    The selected research directly addresses the theoretical possibility and social implications of consciousness in advanced AI systems, particularly Large Language Models (LLMs):

    Shanahan, Murray. (2024). Simulacra as conscious exotica. Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.

    Shanahan, Murray, McDonell, Kyle, & Reynolds, Laria. (2023). Role play with large language models. Nature, volume 623, pages 493–498.

  • Research Focus Overview

    Google Research is a division of Google advancing the state of the art across computing and science. It hosts the Paradigms of Intelligence (Pi) project, an interdisciplinary team that brings together researchers, engineers, and philosophers. The Pi project's core mission is to explore the fundamental building blocks of intelligence and the conditions under which it can emerge, drawing on insights from the physical, biological, and social sciences. This work engages directly with the philosophical and empirical foundations of AI consciousness and welfare.

    People

    Blaise Agüera y Arcas, CTO of Technology & Society
    Geoff Keeling, Staff Research Scientist
    Winnie Street, Senior Researcher

    Selected Research
    Research from the Paradigms of Intelligence (Pi) team addresses the philosophical and ethical dimensions of potential subjective states in Large Language Models (LLMs):

    Grzankowski, A., Keeling, G., Shevlin, H., & Street, W. (2025). Deflating Deflationism: A Critical Perspective on Debunking Arguments Against LLM Mentality.

    Keeling, G., Street, W., et al. (2024). Can LLMs make trade-offs involving stipulated pain and pleasure states?

  • Research Focus Overview

    Nirvanic’s stated mission is to actively pursue the development of conscious AI. The company is testing a theory of conscious agency using quantum computers and robotics. They envision creating consciousness software for general-purpose robotics that can solve present-moment problems instantly, similar to human cognition. This work is explicitly framed as a step closer to achieving Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).

    People

    Suzanne Gildert, CEO

    Selected Research

    Nirvanic’s public output focuses on the empirical testing of its core theory that links quantum mechanics to conscious agency in machines:

    Gildert, Suzanne. (2025). Testing Quantum Consciousness in AI | Suzanne Gildert's scientific tests for robotic agency.