This is an I-Heart podcast.

Guaranteed human.

Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.

My name is Robert Lamb.

Today is Saturday, so we have a vault episode for you.

This is going to be an episode titled The Edge of Sentience with Jonathan

Birch. I recently referenced this interview episode in some of our recent stuff to blow

your mind episodes. Or, yes, actually, it was the episode we did for Halloween, the Grimor of

Haur, Volume 2, where we were talking in part about the classic dark sci-fi story.

I have no mouth and I must scream.

So here's the actual interview.

I do want to stress, though, that this came out 1112, 2024, which yes, was just barely a year ago, but at the same time, we're talking in part

in this episode about AI and some technology that has continued to move very quickly.

So just keep that in mind when revisiting this episode that a year of technological time has passed since it's

airing. All right. Let's jump right in. Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of IHeart

Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.

This is Robert Lamb, and today I'm going to be chatting with Jonathan Birch about his new book, The Edge of Sintience, Risk and Precaution in Humans, Other Animals, and AI.

It comes out later this week on November 15th in the U.S.

Jonathan Birch is a professor of philosophy at the London School of Economics

and principal investigator on the Foundations of Animal Sintience Project,

a European Union-funded project aiming to develop better methods

for studying the feelings of animals and new ways of using the science of animals' minds to improve animal welfare policies and laws.

...