person
David Chalmers
NYU philosopher of mind; 'the hard problem' originator
Philosopher of mind whose 2023 book Reality+ argues virtual worlds are genuine reality. Takes AI consciousness as a live philosophical question and advocates for precaution about AI moral status.
Profile
expertise
External-domain expert
Recognised expert outside AI (philosophy, economics, biology, journalism) who weighs in on AI consequences from that vantage.
NYU philosopher; foundational work on the hard problem of consciousness. Engages AI consciousness rigorously but is not a technical AI researcher.
recognition
Field-leading
Widely known inside the AI and AI-safety community. Appears repeatedly in top venues, podcasts, or governance forums. Not a household name to outsiders.
Major academic philosopher; familiar to philosophy and AI-philosophy audiences. Less mainstream press.
vintage
Symbolic era
Career started in the GOFAI / expert-systems / early-rationalist period. Vinge's 1993 Singularity, MIRI founded 2000, Bostrom and Yudkowsky writing.
PhD 1993 (Indiana). The Conscious Mind 1996. His hard-problem framing precedes the deep-learning era and remains his analytical tool.
Hand-classified. See the board for the criteria and the full grid.
Strategy positions
AI welfareendorses
Model welfare/moral status is a primary considerationArgues AI consciousness is a live philosophical question and moral precaution is warranted.
It's possible that we may already be on a path where we are creating morally significant AI systems.
Closest strategy neighbours
by jaccard overlapOther people whose strategy tags overlap with David Chalmers's. Overlap is on tag identity, not stance; opposites can show up if they reference the same tags.
Record last updated 2026-04-24.