Chris Percy

Chris Percy PhD is a consulting researcher with 50+ technical and academic research publications, including work for the International Labour Organisation, the OECD, the World Bank, the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, and others. Chris's most relevant live activities for this project are:

• Being project lead for a team research grant to investigate artificial consciousness, with key strands including understanding public/expert perspectives, mapping/improving resources to support decision making around artificial consciousness, investigating neglected topics such as “analogue” system consciousness, and exploring links with x-risk game theory & alignment.
• Providing support to Rethink Priorities in their major project to develop a Digital Consciousness Model, leading on field theories and free energy principle informed theories.
• Lead researcher winning joint-first prize in a research competition to develop testable frameworks for artificial consciousness. The project draws on Chris’s prior work in AI and consciousness more generally. In applied AI, he holds a patent in the machine learning domain, is co-founder of a sector award winning AI-powered careers chatbot (operating commercially since 2021), and his AI research has featured in the Journal of AI Communications, AAAI, NeurIPS workshops, and the European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI). In consciousness research, he is the author of eight academic papers, including in Synthese, Entropy, Frontiers of Human Neuroscience, and the Journal of Consciousness Studies. He has presented regularly at consciousness workshops and conferences in recent years, including multiple TSC and ASSC events, an Ernst Mach Workshop, Medialab Matadero events, and AI for Animals & Digital Minds (now Sentient Futures). By way of academic affiliations, Chris has served as Director of Academic Strategy at King’s College London in an interim executive role and is currently a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Derby (UK), an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Warwick (UK), and a visiting researcher at the Qualia Research Institute (US).

Depends on the exact role/project that attracts mentee interest. In general:

• Intellectual rigour
• Curiosity
• Open-mindedness
• Familiarity with academic standards

We have a collection of related activities on this theme where mentees can choose where to focus their time, depending on capacity/interests:

1. Academic research to improve the content of arguments for/against computational functionalism in a synthesis web resource;
2. Analysing web usage and survey data regarding participants' intuitions about computational functionalism and related topics;
3. A qualitative research programme to explore the context behind people changing their position on consciousness, including but not limited to switches to/from computational functionalism (lit review, interviews);
4. Desk research on 'intuition' and 'belief' changing, both within consciousness research and allied fields which have more literature available. Exact amount of time can likely vary week to week, but a few hours a week on average is likely to be a reasonable minimum to make substantial progress. Additional suggestions in this theme are also welcomed.

• Academic research
• Survey analysis
• Paper drafting
• Interviewing

• Shaping research questions/methods
• Debating ideas/assumptions
• Reviewing drafts
• Facilitating connections
• Advising on possible academic/community outlets/events