Thursday, October 8, 2026
7:00 PM – 8:30 PM EDT
Reports of Subjective Experience in LLMs: Digital Minds Reading Group
About this event
DC Digital Minds meets at MLK Library to discuss a recent paper on reports of subjective experience by large language models, weighing its methods and what, if anything, its findings imply about AI cognition.
DC Digital Minds continues its monthly reading group with a close discussion of the 2025 paper “Large Language Models Report Subjective Experience Under Self-Referential Processing.”
The group will examine the study’s approach, its reported results and the limits of the conclusions one can draw from language-model self-reports. The larger context is the group’s continuing exploration of AI minds, behaviour, cognition and moral status. It is a discussion-based session, intended to help participants assess a provocative research claim rather than accept it uncritically.
No specialised background is required. The official Meetup listing identifies this as an active in-person event at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, with the paper linked for attendees who want to read in advance.
Organized by
A Washington discussion community exploring the science, philosophy and ethics of AI systems, including cognition, behaviour, interpretability and moral status.