The Second ICCS Conference
"AI and Sentience"
Heraklion, Crete, Megaron Hotel, 3–5 July 2025
9:00–9:20 — Welcome speeches
09:20–11:20 — General approaches to AI sentience I
Chair: Maria Kasmirli
Keith Frankish. How to think about artificial consciousness
Nicholas Humphrey. The mirage of sentient AI
Michael Pauen. Ascribing Higher Cognitive Abilities to AI
11:20–11:40 — Coffee break
11:40–13:00 — The psychology of AI
Chair: Emanuele Castano
Alessandro Acciai, Alessio Plebe. From Simulation to Dissimulation: Tracing Self-Consciousness in AI
Katarina Marcincinova. Positive aspect of illusionism and its implications for AI sentience
13:00–14:30 — Lunch
14:30–16:30 — Sentient AI in the social context
Chair: Emanuele Castano
Pietro Perconti. Sentient machines already exist (and it has nothing to do with Deep Learning)
Clara Colombatto. Public Perceptions of AI Consciousness: Predictors and Consequences
Antonio Chella. AI Consciousness and Robot Inner Speech
16:30–17:10 — Coffee break and poster session
17:10–19:00 — The selfhood and autonomy of AI
Chair: Artem Besedin
Susan Blackmore. What is it like to be artificially intelligent?
Michael Levin. TBC
9:00–11:00 — General approaches to AI sentience II
Chair: Pietro Perconti
Susan Schneider. Addressing questions of LLM sentience
David Chalmers. On the computational correlates of consciousness
Robert Clowes. Confabulating Centres of Narrative Gravity with Large Language Models and its Implications for Understanding Consciousness
11:00–11:15 — Coffee break
11:15–12:40 — General approaches to AI sentience II (ending)
Chair: Andy Clark
Riccardo Manzotti. AI and Value: from cost function optimization to artificial freedom
Maria Raffa. Active Inference and AI Sentience: A Framework for Exploring Artificial Consciousness
12:40–14:30 — Lunch
14:30–15:50 — Practical approaches to sentient AI
Chair: Dmitry Volkov
Daniel Hulme. Intelligence and Consciousness: in practice
Roman Yampolski. Limits of explainability, predictability and control for advanced AIs/Superintelligence Speech
15:50–17:00 — Coffee break and poster session
17:00–19:00 — Discussion: Sentience beyond human biology
Chair: Patrick House
Discussion with Joscha Bach, Matthew Macdougall, Murray Shanahan, and Dmitry Volkov
9:30–10:00 — Nick Humphrey. Introduction of the Dennett Prize winner
10:00–11:30 — Andy Clark. Dennett Lecture
