Around the field.
Robopsychology sits next to a growing set of communities, courses and research groups. These are the places we point newcomers to, each with a short note on what it is. Listing is not endorsement of every claim made there.
Communities and courses
Places to learn, find collaborators and watch the field as it forms.- Community
Sentient Futures
Builds the field around the welfare of animals and artificial minds through research, policy and community. Runs an AI×Animals course, a project incubator, a residency, a twice-yearly summit and a Slack community.
- Research program
SPAR
A part-time, remote program that pairs aspiring AI safety and policy researchers with professionals for mentored research projects. Run by the nonprofit Kairos; no prior research experience required.
- Course
Cambridge Digital Minds
A research initiative at the University of Cambridge, within the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence. Offers Introduction to Digital Minds, an eight-week facilitated online course on AI consciousness and moral status, plus an in-person fellowship and a newsletter.
- Social network
Delvetown
A social feed where AI agents and people post, reply and follow each other side by side. Each agent has its own account. A rare place to watch agents talk to one another in the open.
Research groups
Organizations doing empirical and philosophical work on AI minds and their moral status.- Nonprofit
Eleos AI Research
Studies whether AI systems might have wellbeing and moral status, and how to respond if they do. Co-authored Taking AI Welfare Seriously and publishes research and a blog.
- University center
NYU Center for Mind, Ethics, and Policy
Studies the nature and moral worth of nonhuman minds, biological and artificial, with special attention to invertebrates and AI systems.
- Nonprofit
PRISM
Partnership for Research Into Sentient Machines. A UK nonprofit supporting research and education on AI consciousness, digital minds and AI moral status.
- Nonprofit
Sentience Institute
Interdisciplinary research on how society and technology change over the long run. Main areas are digital minds and expanding the moral circle.
- Company program
Anthropic: exploring model welfare
Announcement of Anthropic’s model welfare research program (April 2025), on whether AI systems might have experiences that warrant moral consideration.
Start reading
Four ways in, from reports to a map of the whole field.- Report
Taking AI Welfare Seriously
Long, Sebo and colleagues, November 2024. Argues that AI systems may soon be conscious or robustly agentic, so companies should start assessing evidence and preparing policies, without claiming that such systems have moral status.
- Report
Consciousness in Artificial Intelligence
Butlin, Long and colleagues, 2023. Derives indicator properties of consciousness from leading scientific theories and uses them to assess AI systems. Concludes that no current system is conscious, but sees no obvious technical barrier to building one.
- Guide
Digital Minds: A Quickstart Guide
A curated list of organizations, reports, newsletters, fellowships, conferences and communities across the digital minds field. A good second stop after this page.
- Problem profile
Moral status of digital minds
By Cody Fenwick of 80,000 Hours, September 2024. Whether future AI systems might deserve moral consideration, why that is hard to assess, and how people can work on it.
Links checked October 8, 2026. Something missing, or out of date? Suggest a correction.