Full show notes & links here.
Roman is a Professor of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Louisville. He is known for his work on behavioral biometrics, the security of cyberworlds & artificial intelligence safety. He founded the field of intellectology – the analysis of the forms & limits of intelligence. He is director of the Cyber Security Laboratory in the department of Computer Engineering &Computer Science at the Speed School of Engineering. Roman has written over 100 publications, including many books spanning these fields.
In these Sentientist Conversations, we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?”
To catch the cameo from Luna the puppy ("seems conscious") watch the video of our conversation here. Don't forget to subscribe to our channel while you're there.
We discuss:

Growing up in the Soviet Union. Not much religion around.
Not meeting anyone religious until coming to the US as an adult
Not finding religious arguments interesting or compelling
Fascination with intersection of big ideas, philosophy, science
Questions can come from religion, but standards of evidence come from science
Comfort with others holding supernatural beliefs – helps us remain open-minded
Is god analogous with someone running a world simulation?
We need to get better at evaluating evidence. Should be separate from theories/hypotheses
The need for scientific humility
Deep fakes
Freedom as an ethical foundation, subject to not hurting others or restricting the freedom of others
Can we develop a pop-up AI that guides our ethics?
Consciousness / sentience warrants protection
Can Artificial Intelligences achieve consciousness or even super-consciousness?
Humans might need to beg future AIs for our rights, as we grant rights to animals
The hypocrisy of thinking animals should have rights, but enjoying eating them (theory vs. practice & cognitive dissonance)
Why so many AI researchers are ready to acknowledge AI sentience but forget or disregard non-human animal sentience
Consciousness, sentience, qualia, the “Hard Problem”, David Chalmers
Assessing sentience
The role of observers in quantum physics. Could there be some non-material element of consciousness?
Meeting Luna the puppy “Seems conscious!”
Will future AIs warrant protection/rights
Ending animal farming to set a good example to our future AI overlords
AIs will prefer “sentientism” to “humanism”
Substrate independence
Sentience/consciousness as a spectrum, simple to super (beyond human)
Ethical challenges with non-sentient AI
If human agents can’t agree (value alignment problem), can we even move towards a shared environment that will make us all happy? Maybe everyone could have their own individual virtual world!
Even a positively negotiated shared environment wouldn’t be as good for each of us as a perfect individual environment – just don’t switch it off
Can animal farming go away in a few years via clean-meat etc?
Veganism and moral resolutions to cognitive dissonance, vs. tech alternatives removing blockers
The dangers of disenfranchising humans if we grant rights too broadly (e.g. to trillions of bacteria or sentient AIs)
Equal vs. degrees of moral consideration
“Most of us will be as ethical as our choices”.