Inside Google DeepMind’s New AI Ethics Frontier

How should humans relate to generative AI? In what ways do we, or should we, treat a large language model (LLM) as if it were a person? If an AI became conscious, how could we tell? Does it make sense to think AI could some day have moral rights? These are among the cognitive and ethical questions that occupied philosopher Henry Shevlin at Cambridge University’s Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence. But last May Shevlin became part of the growing cohort of philosophers who work inside leading artificial intelligence companies. Though he remains active at Cambridge, he now spends 80 percent of his time at Google DeepMind (job title: “Philosopher”).

Shevlin spoke with IEEE Spectrum about why philosophers are drawn to AI, how humans and AIs relate to one another, fears of “rogue” AI and AI relationships that harm humans, and how the question of AI consciousness may never have a simple “yes” or “no” answer.

What made you want to switch from full-time academic philosopher to spending much of your time at an AI Lab?

Henry Shevlin: Three factors. One is that I had lots of brilliant students from DeepMind. Two, the potential for direct impact. I can’t go into details, but on one occasion, after I gave a lecture [at Deep Mind], someone who worked for a major financial institution led changes in their organization that I think positively impact millions of people. There have been quite a few instances like that. Three, my sense of deep commonality between DeepMind culture and the kind of scientific attitude I like.

And there’s a fourth point: [AI labs are] where really high quality philosophy and cognitive science are taking place.

Why can’t universities alone do that work?

Shevlin: Large parts of AI ethics academia were quite slow to wake up [about AI’s capabilities]. Academia was sluggish. Another thing is, AI does just move so fast. Daily contact with the technology is basically essential for developing good mental models with LLMs, which are just very weird things. Unless you have that sort of face time, it’s going to be hard for you to develop good intuitions about the questions it raises.

What is an example of an idea about AI that became obsolete because the technology advanced so quickly?

Shevlin: Debates around LLMs’ potential creativity. There was a time when everyone was like, “oh well, the LLM is going to only produce beige, only produce slop.” Now they’re doing frontier math, they’re doing superior coding to humans. It is clear now that they are not stuck at the level of mediocre humanity. The [models today] may not be able to do the most dramatic forms of creativity—the Einstein moments, the Picasso moments. But in some domains, they are really at the frontier.

Yet ordinary people in 2026 complain that they’re coping with AI “slop” all over—in music, social media, writing, videos, to name only a few examples.

Shevlin: There’s a distinction here between content slop versus LLM style language, which…