Four years ago, a Google engineer named Blake Lemoine went public with a strange claim: he thought the large language model he’d been working on had become sentient. At the time, virtually no one took him seriously. (Including, it would seem, Google, who promptly fired him). But lately, it’s started to seem like Lemoine might have been on to something.

When I interviewed Geoffrey Hinton last year, he was pretty confident that artificial intelligence was already exhibiting signs of sentience. Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, has said that he can’t be sure that his chatbot, Claude, isn’t conscious.

But what exactly does that mean? A chatbot may be intelligent, but does it have a sense of self? And what would happen if it did?

These are the kinds of strange, mind-bending questions Michael Pollan wrestles with in his new book, A World Appears: A Journey Into Consciousness.

It’s the kind of book that raises more questions than it answers. But as Silicon Valley continues to flirt with the idea of building artificial consciousness – of designing machines that don’t just think, but feel – these are the kinds of questions we should probably start asking.

A World Appears: A Journey Into Consciousness, by Michael Pollan

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Just a few years ago, it seemed like all anyone in AI wanted to talk about was existential risk – this idea that an artificial super intelligence could eventually break containment and destroy humanity. More than 30,000 experts signed an open letter demanding a pause on AI development; bills were drafted that would constrain the most powerful new models; and the “godfathers” of AI were travelling around the world, warning anyone who would listen that we were hurtling toward our extinction.

And then: we moved on. We started using AI for work, and school, and to plan our kids’ birthday parties. Collectively, we just stopped talking about the end of the world.

But Nate Soares didn’t move on. Last year, the artificial intelligence researcher wrote a book with Eliezer Yudkowsky called If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies. As you can probably tell from the title, the book is unequivocal: If we keep going down the path we’re on, it will almost certainly lead to the end of our species.

Now, not everyone is convinced of the arguments Soares makes. But if there’s even a chance he’s right, I think we need to hear him out.

If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies, by Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

On Feb. 10, 2026, an 18-year-old opened fire at a high school in Tumbler Ridge, B.C., killing eight people before turning a gun on herself. In the weeks that followed, OpenAI admitted that the perpetrator had been discussing the attack with ChatGPT – and that the company had chosen not to alert authorities. But, in the aftermath of one of the deadliest shootings in our country’s history, many Canadians are asking: Why not?

It’s a reasonable question. But the idea that AI companies should automatically report violent conversations to police is more complicated than it sounds.

To try and unpack it, I spoke with Meredith Whittaker, the President of Signal – an encrypted messaging platform that doesn’t collect your data, serve you ads, or track who you’re talking to. Whittaker runs the most private messaging app on the planet, which also means there is almost certainly illegal activity happening on Signal that no one, including her, knows about.

But this conversation isn’t just about Tumbler Ridge. The instinct to trade privacy for “safety” is reshaping the entire tech landscape: Amazon now lets you scan a whole neighbourhood’s worth of Ring camera footage; Australia requires teenagers to verify their ages before accessing social media. These technologies offer real value – but they all ask you to give something up in return. So I wanted to ask Whittaker why that trade might not be worth making.

Editor's note: A previous version of this article reported an incorrect final tally of the injured during the shooting at Tumbler Ridge. Two were critically injured. The podcast audio also includes an incorrect final tally of the injured.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.