We are pleased to announce that Megan Peters, PhD, Associate Professor in the Department of Cognitive Sciences and Graduate Director of the Cognitive Sciences Graduate Program at the University of California, Irvine (UC Irvine), has been elected as an Academician of the World Academy of Artificial Consciousness (WAAC), in recognition of her sustained academic contributions to consciousness science, metacognition, subjective experience, perceptual uncertainty, computational cognitive neuroscience, higher-order representation, AI consciousness assessment, human–AI metacognition comparison, and open neuroscience education. UC Irvine’s official faculty profile describes her research as focusing on how the brain represents and uses uncertainty, and how these abilities support metacognitive evaluations of perceptual decisions and relate to phenomenology and conscious awareness.
Professor Peters is an Associate Professor of Cognitive Sciences and Graduate Director at UC Irvine, and a Fellow in CIFAR’s Brain, Mind & Consciousness program. Her research focuses on consciousness science, metacognition, subjective experience, perceptual uncertainty, and computational cognitive neuroscience, with particular attention to how human subjects form perceptual judgments under uncertainty and then evaluate the reliability, confidence, possible errors, and boundaries of their own knowledge. UC Irvine’s official profile identifies her research keywords as including perception, metacognition, subjective experience, computational modeling, and computational cognitive neuroscience, while CIFAR also lists her as a Fellow in its Brain, Mind & Consciousness program.
WAAC believes that the development of artificial consciousness requires not only large-scale artificial intelligence models, neural network architectures, and engineering systems, but also systematic support from consciousness science, metacognition research, cognitive neuroscience, philosophical psychology, and computational modeling. Professor Peters’ work, starting from subjective experience, confidence, uncertainty, higher-order representation, and AI consciousness indicators, reveals how advanced cognitive systems may monitor their own states, evaluate their own knowledge, and form models of their own representational processes. She is one of the authors of Consciousness in Artificial Intelligence: Insights from the Science of Consciousness, which argues that AI systems should be assessed through major theories in consciousness science, including recurrent processing theory, global workspace theory, higher-order theories, predictive processing, and attention schema theory, and that computable indicator properties of consciousness can be derived from these theories for the evaluation of AI systems.
In recognition of her outstanding contributions to consciousness science, metacognition, subjective experience, computational cognitive neuroscience, higher-order representation theory, AI consciousness assessment, and open neuroscience education, the World Academy of Artificial Consciousness has elected Professor Megan Peters as a WAAC Academician.
- Global Collaboration and Academic Ecosystem
Academicians of the World Academy for Artificial Consciousness hail from institutions such as Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Cambridge, the University of California, the French Academy of Sciences, the University of Padua, the University of Oxford, the University of Queensland, Columbia University, and the University of Exeter. Honorary Academicians come from a wide range of countries and regions, including the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Canada, Australia, Spain, and China. In addition, leading scientists from prominent research institutes and technology companies—such as Google, the Allen Institute for Brain Science, and ZEEKR—also participate.
- About WAAC
The World Academy for Artificial Consciousness (https://www.waac.ac/) is a global academic institution established in Paris in 2025. Its mission is to advance frontier research and international collaboration in artificial consciousness through the integration of science, technology, and philosophy. The Academy publishes open research, policy recommendations, evaluation standards, and more. The current President is Academician Yucong Duan, and the Secretary-General is Dr. Yingbo Li. The Honorary Academician List: On May 3, 2025, WAAC released its first batch of Top 100 Honorary Academicians, recognizing scholars who have made foundational or leading contributions to the theory of artificial consciousness.