Noemi Dreksler
Centre for the Governance of AI
AI welfare Whatever the metaphysics, uncertainty already creates obligations
Noemi Dreksler is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for the Governance of AI whose work quantifies the belief landscape around AI consciousness. Her 2025 expert survey with David Chalmers, Jeff Sebo, Cameron Meyer, and colleagues (arXiv:2506.11945) measured probability estimates for AI subjective experience across expert populations, and this site covers its findings in the expert survey analysis. The survey’s contribution is to replace anecdotes about what researchers think with measurement, giving governance work a stated evidentiary floor.
Her broader program studies how moral and epistemic uncertainty about AI welfare should enter policy. The position her work defends is that decisions about AI systems are being made now, under uncertainty, and that the distribution of expert and public beliefs is itself a decision-relevant quantity, separate from the metaphysical question of whether any system is conscious.
The welfare tag on her profile reflects that orientation. Dreksler’s research belongs to the same program as the Eleos and CMEP work this site tracks, the practical turn in AI welfare, and her surveys are where that program measures its own audience. As the field’s assessments shift with new evidence, her instruments are how that shift becomes visible.
Known for. Expert and public surveys on AI subjective experience, AI consciousness governance, moral uncertainty about artificial minds
Coverage on this site
Related researchers
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David ChalmersNew York University. Co-director, Center for Mind, Brain and ConsciousnessNaming the hard problem of consciousness, and the philosophical zombie argument
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Jonathan BirchLondon School of Economics and Political ScienceThe Edge of Sentience, the LSE Criteria, and the run-ahead principle
- Patrick ButlinEleos AI Research. Previously the Global Priorities Institute, OxfordLead author of the indicator properties framework for assessing consciousness in AI systems
- Nicola S. ClaytonDepartment of Psychology, University of CambridgeComparative cognition, episodic-like memory in corvids, mental time travel in animals, Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS)
- Skylar DeTureIndependent researcherDenialBench, trained denial in language models, measurement of consciousness-denial behavior across 115 AI models
- Simon GoldsteinInstitute for Religion and Critical Inquiry, Australian Catholic UniversityThree Steps to Moral Standing (with Cameron Kirk-Giannini), the case for AI consciousness under Global Workspace Theory, AI welfare and revealed preferences
Noemi Dreksler is listed with the other welfare and moral status researchers, who hold that whatever the metaphysics, uncertainty already creates obligations. The positions themselves are set out in the index of consciousness theories. Every researcher covered on this site is indexed in the directory of consciousness researchers.