Art and Consciousness after AGI
Anil Seth and Zoë Hitzig

Neuroscientist Anil Seth and poet and technology researcher Zoë Hitzig delve into the evolving concept of consciousness as it relates to the rise of artificial general intelligence (AGI). Their dialogue touches on the boundaries between human and machine cognition, the future of AGI, and how the development of intelligent machines may challenge our understanding of the mind, subjectivity, and art.

The dialogue will be introduced by Sam Gill, president of the Doris Duke Foundation, whose remarks will explore the far-reaching implications of AGI for the future of labor and artistic creation. Framing the conversation through the lens of the foundation’s Creative Labor, Creative Conditions initiative, he will raise urgent questions about what work and creativity mean in a world where machines can think and make.

Anil Seth is a British neuroscientist, author, and public speaker who has pioneered research into the brain basis of consciousness for more than twenty-five years. He is a professor of cognitive and computational neuroscience at the University of Sussex, Director of the Sussex Centre for Consciousness Science, and Co-Director of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) Program on Brain, Mind, and Consciousness. Seth has contributed extensively to the philosophy and neuroscience of consciousness through his work on the predictive brain, which delves into how neural predictions shape and constitute our perceptual experiences of the world and of the self. His influential TED talk, “Your Brain Hallucinates Your Conscious Reality,” proposes that humans actively construct their experience of reality based on memory, sensory input, and expectations. He is the author of several publications, including the Sunday Times bestseller Being You: A New Science of Consciousness (2021)—an exploration of the neural processes that give rise to consciousness, with broad implications for self-awareness and emotions. In 2023 he was awarded the Royal Society Michael Faraday Prize for excellence in public engagement, and in 2024 was listed as one of the Top 25 Global Thinkers by Prospect Magazine. He currently serves on the Editorial Board of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, the Advisory Committee for 1907 Foundation, and Chile’s Congreso Futuro. 

Zoë Hitzig is an American poet, economist and technologist whose work investigates how we formalize, encode, and negotiate values such as privacy and fairness within the technical architectures that govern everyday life. She is a junior fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows and a research scientist at OpenAI. Hitzig’s public scholarship ranges from her influential essay “On the Grid: How Surveillance Became a Love Language” to the co-creation of a community-powered financing mechanism that has been used to channel millions of dollars to open-source infrastructure, climate initiatives, and other public goods. Her first poetry collection Mezzanine (2020) interrogates the authority of the political, technological, economic, and legal systems that mediate our lives; her second collection, Not Us Now (2024), explores the entanglement of human and machine, using the language of algorithms and systems to probe how meaning, identity, and feeling are shaped in the information age. It was the winner of the 2024 Changes Book Prize. Her poems and writing have also appeared in publications such as The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The Paris Review, Harper’s, and The Drift, where she also serves as poetry editor. Her work has been recognized with fellowships and awards from arts, technology and policy organizations, including Fogo Island Arts, the Watermill Center, Microsoft Research, and the Future of Privacy Forum.

Sam Gill is the president and CEO of the Doris Duke Foundation (DDF), a New York–headquartered, national philanthropic organization that operates five national grantmaking programs—in the performing arts, the environment, medical research, child and family well-being, and mutual understanding between communities—as well as Duke Farms and Shangri La, two centers that serve the public directly. Prior to joining DDF, Gill was senior vice president and chief program officer at the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, where he oversaw more than $100 million in annual grantmaking across the foundation’s programs, in addition to managing Knight’s research and assessment portfolio and its grants administration function.