Susan Schneider

Susan Schneider is the NASA-Baruch Blumberg Chair at the Library of Congress and the author of the new book, Artificial You: AI and the Future of the Mind, where she discusses the social implications of AI. As a philosopher and cognitive scientist, she looks at the big picture: whether AI will reshape the human mind, whether we can really create AIs that rival or surpass human intelligence, and what all this tells us about the nature of consciousness and the self.

As the NASA chair, she ties these issues in with big questions in astrobiology, asking whether civilizations throughout the universe develop AI and even become "postbiological." Her work in philosophy of AI has now taken her to the Hill, where she meets with members of Congress on AI policy on a range of topics, such as data privacy, algorithmic bias, technological unemployment, autonomous weapons, and more.

Schneider appears frequently on television shows on stations such as PBS, BBC, Fox, National Geographic and The History Channel, as well as keynoting AI ethics conferences at places such as Harvard and Cambridge. She also writes opinion pieces on AI for the New York Times, Scientific American and The Financial Times. Her work has been widely discussed in the media, at venues like The New York Times, Science, Big Think, Nautilus, Discover and Smithsonian.