FAU’s Mindfest 2025 Gathered Experts to Explore the Future of Human-AI Interaction

Mindfest, the annual conference of Florida Atlantic University’s Center for the Future Mind: Shaping the Future of AI, Mind and Society, brought together experts from all over the world to explore the nature of mind – natural, artificial, and hybrid – and the future of intelligent systems. The two days of inquiry focused on the rise of AI chatbots as well as the nature of consciousness.  This year, the Center partnered with the PBS national television show “Closer to Truth” to showcase interviews of many of the conference speakers. The interviews are now found at the Closer to Truth website  As well as on the Center’s website.

The conference was organized by Susan Schneider, the William F. Dietrich Distinguished Professor at FAU, former NASA chair and Distinguished Scholar at the Library of Congress, and founder of FAU’s Center for the Future Mind. Her recent op-ed in  “Scientific American” on whether AI chatbots are conscious can be found here.  

Conference speakers included many of the Center members, such as FAU’s Elan Barenholz, FAU’s Sarah Malinowski, and Mark Bailey (National Intelligence University), as well as the star of Closer to Truth, Robert Lawrence Kuhn, the Economist Robin Hanson, Zoltan Istvan, a transhumanist author and former presidential candidate and James Hughes, the director of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies .

The Center for the Future Mind is based within FAU’s Brain Institute, as well as the Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters at FAU.