Join vegan educator, TEDx speaker and content creator Ed Winters as he explores topics surrounding veganism, morality, ethics, communication, and the environment, as well as discussing current events. Winters has spoken at over 1/3 of UK universities and at 6 Ivy league colleges, including as a guest lecturer at Harvard University. He has given speeches across the world, including at the University of Cambridge, EPFL, Google NYC and Google Zürich. In early 2019 he gave two TEDx talks, reaching a total of 1.5 million views online. His speech “You Will Never Look at Your Life in the Same Way Again” has 35 million accumulative views online and has been given to thousands of students across UK universities.
Is AI sentient? Professor breaks down the evidence around AI, plant, fish and insect sentience
Dr Jonathan Birch is a prize winning Professor of Philosophy at the London School of Economics (LSE). His research focuses on animal sentience, welfare, and ethics. He is also Director of The Jeremy Coller Centre for Animal Sentience, a new research centre based in LSE.
Dr Birch is an internationally respected philosopher and author of dozens of articles and two books, including 2025’s award winning book The Edge of Sentience. In 2021, he was the Principal Investigator of a review that led the UK to recognise cephalopods and decapod crustaceans as sentient. Jonathan’s work has been cited in several policies banning octopus farming. He is also a founding member of the Insect Welfare Research Society, a group of researchers working together to close gaps regarding evidence on insect welfare and sentience.
In 2014, he received a Philip Leverhulme Prize, which recognises 'the achievement of outstanding researchers whose work has already attracted international recognition and whose future career is exceptionally promising'.
You can find more about Jonathan's work here:
- https://www.lse.ac.uk/people/jonathan-birch
- https://www.lse.ac.uk/sentience
Today's topics:
What is sentience? In today's podcast episode I chat with Dr Jonathan Birch, a prize-winning philosopher and expert on sentience. We discuss whether AI is or will ever be sentient, as well as whether plants, fish or insects are sentient.
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