Futures with digital minds: Expert forecasts in 2025

By Lucius Caviola, Bradford Saad @ 2025-08-16T20:00 (+58)

This is a linkpost to https://digitalminds.report/forecasting-2025/

We surveyed experts about the future of digital minds — computer systems capable of subjective experiences.

The survey explored a wide range of difficult and speculative questions: when digital minds will first be created, how quickly their collective welfare capacity will expand, what types of digital minds will emerge, where and by whom digital minds will be built, whether their net welfare will be positive or negative, what claims they will make about consciousness and rights, how society will respond—through protections, recognition, or resistance—and what the implications will be for AI safety.

The report begins with a concise summary of the main findings.

JackM @ 2025-08-17T00:52 (+5)

This seems really important and under-discussed:

Interactions with AI safety:There was little convergence among participants on whether AI safety and digital mind welfare efforts will align or conflict. Mentioned potential synergies included alignment reducing the need for coercive control and shared technical tools (e.g., interpretability methods). Potential conflicts included safety measures such as monitoring and shutdown protocols that could harm digital minds, welfare protections limiting the ability to control AI behavior, and competition for scarce funding, talent, and regulatory attention.