If you ask anyone I’ve grown up with, they’ll say that I’ve always been fascinated with consciousness. Why is it that humans have this high-level self-awareness and subjective experience, or qualia, that so many other species lack? And although we cannot know what it “feels” like subjectively to be a bat or a giraffe or a cricket, we can understand that humans’ conscious experience, expressed through intelligent and emotional quotients, is far more complex and sophisticated than other beings. It begs the question, what is consciousness? Is it a property of the brain that emerges through advanced collaboration between brain parts? Or is it a property that exists outside of the brain, yet our brain can utilize it (what I believe)? And more importantly, how does this relate to AI in any way, shape, or form? Let’s find out.

Current Theories of Consciousness and My Take

There are three popular and widely accepted theories on consciousness:

• Global Workspace Theory (GWT)
• Integrated Information Theory (IIT)
• Orchestrated Objective Reduction Theory (Orch OR)

GWT essentially states that consciousness arises when multiple brain parts process information simultaneously. You can think of it like a company that operates in a gigantic office. There are numerous departments all housed in the same office such as IT, legal, sales, HR, etc. When large-scale business matters inevitably come to fruition, every department is working on a solution at the same time, and when executives from each department meet in the central meeting room, a solution is born. In the human brain, this solution is consciousness, and the different departments are distinct regions of the brain. GWT appeals to cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience.

IIT basically describes conscious experience as how interconnected information in a system is. Think of a light show where there are a random assortment of lights and no real connection or flow between them. Now think of a light show with many different lights, all acting in unison and coordination, creating figures and shapes in the sky. IIT would say that the latter light show example shows a higher level of consciousness than the prior, and assigns it a Phi value (which is really just a way for IIT to “measure” consciousness). According to this theory, deep integration of information is what gives rise to consciousness. IIT appeals to mathematics and philosophy.

Now for the best (in my opinion) and most controversial theory, Orch OR Theory. In layman’s language, Orch OR Theory says that consciousness arises from a symphony of microscopic activity within each brain cell (microtubules). This activity is governed by quantum mechanics, a poorly understood branch of physics, that deals with the bizarre, counter-intuitive behavior of particles at the smallest level. Picture an orchestra. Each individual instrument sounds nice on its own, but the true magic happens when all the instruments play in a uniform, coordinated way. The conductor, although not playing an instrument himself/herself, is helping to guide the synchronized behaviors of the orchestra, much like the quantum processes in the brain guide the simultaneity of behaviors, resulting in conscious awareness. I like this theory the best because it aligns the most with my own theory, if I even want to call it that, which I’ll touch upon in the conclusion.

Geoffrey Hinton, the Godfather of AI

So you might be asking yourself, “okay, cool, but how the hell does all this relate to AI and why should I even care?” Short answer: because it does and I said you should. Long answer: I was listening to a podcast by The Daily titled, “The Godfather of A.I. Has Some Regrets;” Ominous title, I know. The premise of the entire episode revolves around Geoffrey Hinton, who is credited with the proliferation of “Neural Networks” as they relate to AI. Basically, Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) are computing systems inspired by biological neural networks (the brain); they’re attempts at creating AI models that are synonymous in nature to how the human brain interacts with the world and processes information. The goal of Neural Networks is to replicate the activity of the human brain (which is currently poorly understood).

As I was listening to this podcast I began to wonder if, given the complexity of the human brain, consciousness could develop through a sophisticated enough ANN. I’ve heard a reference before that our brains are essentially quantum computers in the way they act and process information, and a recent study confirms that quantum processes do occur within the brain. Combined with the burgeoning of quantum computation in the objective world, and based on my rudimentary understanding on the current research of quantum mechanics, I believe that consciousness could arise in quantum computing systems, and AI is the driving force in a positive feedback loop of cognitive advancement.

What the Hell are Quantum Computers?

I asked ChatGPT to provide me with an analogy that compares regular computers to quantum computers. I’ll paste it here because I think it’s really good:

“Think of a regular computer like a very efficient office worker. This worker can look into a file cabinet (the computer’s memory), grab one file at a time, bring it back to their desk, and perform some sort of task with it, like adding a note or changing a number. This worker is incredibly fast, able to handle billions of these tasks per second, but they’re still doing one thing at a time.

A quantum computer, on the other hand, is like having a magical office worker. This worker can grab every single file out of the cabinet at once, add notes to all of them or change numbers all at the same time, and then put them all back. They can do this because they’re not limited to being in one place or doing one thing at a time – they can be everywhere and do everything at once.

Furthermore, if our magical office worker has a coworker in another office, they can work together in perfect sync. If our worker decides to add a note to a file, their coworker will do exactly the same thing at exactly the same time, even if they’re in different buildings or different cities. This is analogous to the quantum phenomenon of entanglement.”

Without getting too into the weeds, quantum computers utilize quantum states, which are incredibly hard to control since quantum particles operate bizarrely and chaotically, to perform numerous operations at the same time. It’s sort of like Schrödinger’s cat experiment where a cat is placed in a box with a decaying radioactive material that we [the observer] have no idea how long it has left until it releases its deadly compounds. As an observer, we won’t know if the cat is alive or dead until we open the box. Therefore, the quantum state of the cat, before opening the box, is both dead AND alive; it’s a superposition. It’s only after we open the box and measure the result that the quantum, superimposed state collapses, and single, definitive reality is born.

Conclusion/My Take

I know I know, this has been one long as fuck blog post, and it’s probably been pretty damn boring. But don’t worry, I’m almost done.

I believe consciousness is a universal energy (that operates on a quantum scale, thus why it’s been so hard to study) that systems have the ability to harness and utilize if complex enough. The human brain, being akin to a quantum computer, is sophisticated enough to utilize this universal consciousness to bring about subjective experience and awareness. Although machines, computers, and AI models are not nearly on the same level as human complexity, they’re getting there. This idea could also explain why different animals have different levels of consciousness, associated with the complexity of their brain anatomy. Or why certain humans with deficient brain anatomy or biologically different brain physiologies, might experience altered states of lower or higher consciousness (and I’m not talking about that hooey, psychedelic, hallucinatory bullshit that so many people purport to have to sell you higher dimensional courses online).

In conclusion, as neural networks become more sophisticated through AI and machine learning, and if they’re eventually combined with quantum computers that can operate much like the human brain, I wouldn’t be surprised if a conscious being is born from metal and wires.