The video below is from our June 11, 2026 event at the Byron Bay RSL.

The synopsis of the presentation:

If you’ve been following recent news on Artificial Intelligence (AI), you may have heard a lot of discussion about the the views of no-less a luminary than evolutionary biologist, skeptic and Atheist-In-Chief Richard Dawkins, who, after spending two days talking to the Claude Chatbot, came away with the very distinct impression that he had been talking to a conscious entity.  Dawkins is not alone in this perspective. A recent survey of chatbot users revealed that some 40% of them have the belief that they are actually talking to a sentient being.

In this talk, Al Percival takes a deeper look at the thorny question of whether AI might be showing signs of consciousness – and if it isn’t, how does it manage to fool so many people?

Going further, we’ll explore if there are any reasons why an AI can or can’t be conscious – either now or in the future?
We’re going to take a wild ride through numerous disciplines – philosophy, maths, neuroscience, computer science and even meteorology to try to come to terms with this and see if there is an answer to the question “Can consciousness be computed?”
Note – this talk doesn’t assume any pre-existing knowledge or experience of AI.  We’ll be taking things from 1st principles.