DeepMind's decision to create a dedicated philosopher position — not a one-off ethics advisory role, but a named hire with a specific remit around machine consciousness and AGI — represents a structural admission. The appointment of Henry Shevlin frames consciousness not as a long-run speculative concern but as something the lab expects to encounter at scale before it has a framework to handle it. Shevlin's background at the Leverhulme Centre places him among the researchers who have spent years arguing that the hard problem of consciousness is not separable from…