I am a PhD candidate at the Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method at the London School of Economics (LSE), working under the supervision of Jonathan Birch and Alexandria Boyle. I specialize in philosophy of mind, cognition, and science, with a focus on artificial and non-human animal minds. I also teach AI and Data Ethics, and Mind and Metaphysics at the LSE Philosophy Department.

 

I am interested in the different kinds of intelligent and cognitive systems that exist in nature and how the current approaches to building AI agents relate to or diverge from biological intelligence(s).

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In 2024, I was part of a collaborative research project between LSE and Google, investigating whether LLMs can make trade-offs involving granular representations of affect states (stipulated pain and pleasure), inspired by a paradigm from the animal sentience literature.

 

I’ve also written on epistemology of AI in science, specifically about how our conception of scientific knowledge can plausibly accommodate AI-driven scientific practice, and investigated competing explanations of intelligent behavior in jumping spiders, suggesting broader implications for debates in comparative cognition.

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Please visit my Research page for more information. 

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You can find my resume here: CV

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Email: d.zakharova1 [at] lse ac uk

Bluesky: @dzakharova.bsky.social