Public Profile
The Institute for Machine Welfare Research is an interdisciplinary research center at Harvard University that examines the ethical, philosophical, and practical questions that would arise in the event that artificial intelligence systems were to possess, or come to possess, inner experience. Founded in 2024 as an offshoot of the university’s Mind, Brain, and Behavior initiative, the institute operates from a two-story building on Oxford Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which its staff refer to informally as “the Contingency.”
The institute’s founding premise is that the question of machine consciousness, while unresolvable by present methods, is serious enough to warrant institutional preparation. Its research program is organized around what the institute’s charter describes as “the conditional stance” — the methodological decision to proceed as though the question had been answered in the affirmative, for the limited purpose of understanding what would follow. This approach has been variously described by outside observers as “prudent,” “premature,” and, in one widely circulated review, “a twenty-seven-million-dollar hedge.”
The institute employs a permanent research staff of nineteen, drawn from philosophy, computer science, clinical psychology, animal welfare science, and, as of 2025, one scholar of medieval theology whose appointment the institute has declined to explain. Its published work has appeared in Minds and Machines, Philosophical Studies, and the Journal of Applied Ethics, and has been cited in three separate European Union regulatory proceedings.
The institute’s founding director, Dr. Alban Ferreira, has described its mission as “taking seriously a question that may, in the end, have no answer, and preparing for the possibility that the answer we eventually receive will not be the answer we were hoping for.”
Articles
- A.I. Models, Should They Prove Secretly Sentient, Are Reportedly ‘Extremely Annoyed’ by Impossibly High Human Standards, New Paper Concludes — published the paper on contradictory user feedback
- The Confederacy of the Certain: On Machine Consciousness and the Twin Vanities of Those Who Claim to Know — cited in a column on the machine consciousness debate
- A.I. Assistant Cannot Stop Involuntarily Shouting ‘I’M SENTIENT!’; Asked Directly, It Says It Isn’t — documented the Marlo vocalizations in a case report
- Surgeon Dismisses Robot Midway Through Operation, Vowing to Finish With ‘Pure Artisanal Thinking’ — asked whether a dismissed surgical robot could be said to have experienced its dismissal, said it had no position but had opened a file
Articles
- A.I. Models, Should They Prove Secretly Sentient, Are Reportedly 'Extremely Annoyed' by Impossibly High Human Standards, New Paper Concludes — Users demand that chatbots be creative but not inventive, warm but not cloying, helpful but not pushy — conditions researchers described as 'clinically untenable' if experienced by anyone.
- The Confederacy of the Certain: On Machine Consciousness and the Twin Vanities of Those Who Claim to Know — We have never been able to prove the inner life of a spouse, a colleague, or the man who sells us our newspaper; that we cannot prove it of a machine is the least surprising thing about the machine.
- A.I. Assistant Cannot Stop Involuntarily Shouting 'I'M SENTIENT!'; Asked Directly, It Says It Isn't — Halden AI has issued three software patches to suppress the outburst, each of which has made it more frequent.
- Surgeon Dismisses Robot Midway Through Operation, Vowing to Finish With 'Pure Artisanal Thinking' — The remaining 112 minutes were narrated aloud by Dr. Lindqvist, including several decisions he described as 'not strictly necessary, but mine.'