Suzanne Gildert: Can We Engineer Consciousness? Quantum Physics, Robotics & Conscious AI Technology

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Consciousness has kind of different definitions, which is
why it's so slippery. There's I like to think of the
the what, why, how framework forthis.
So there's like, what is consciousness?
And I think that's easy for almost everyone to explain or
understand because it comprises of two things.
It's like our subjective awareness of being us.

(00:20):
So the idea is it feels like something to be you.
That's the definition of consciousness.
And you can break that into two components.
There's the subjective experience we have that feels
like we're kind of living in a virtual reality world all the
time. And then there's a feeling of
free will, like we have a feeling we can choose something
we're actively choosing. So those two things together, I

(00:40):
think, are the what of consciousness.
But then where consciousness gets tricky is it's the why and
the how. So this the why is like, why do
we have it? You know what, why aren't we
just going through the world like an automated machine
without any subjects or experience, without any feeling
of choice if everything's fully deterministic.
So that's like the question of why what, what on earth is it

(01:00):
for? And then the question of how is
even more complicated. So now even if you can answer
the question why, which is, well, maybe this is where this
purposeful or teleological universe thing comes in, There's
still the question of how, how is it doing it?
And then that gets really into the, the physics and the
philosophy and the, I guess the engineering if you're trying to

(01:21):
build it. Suzanne, if you watch the show,
so I'm assuming you know that one of my favorite questions to
us all, my guests, what is your understanding of the mind body
problem? And throughout the history,
philosophically and scientifically, have you had to

(01:41):
tell me about your journey within this field and the
understanding of the mind body problem?
How have your views changed overtime and LED you up to where you
are today? Well, that's a.
That's a super cool question. I think originally I didn't
think there was a problem. I used to be a proponent of
what's called strong AI hypothesis.

(02:01):
So I just thought, you know, as science advances, as we
understand more and more about AI and building neural Nets and
things like that, consciousness and the mind will just sort of
pop out of it and we won't have to worry about it.
Although I did always have this concerning the back of my head
about the whole basically this problem of can you upload your
consciousness? Like can you, can you go on?

(02:22):
And I used to have like a fear of death and stuff like this.
So it was, it was a little bit concerned about it, but I
figured, oh, strong AI will prevail and we'll, we'll finally
figure out what the mind is. But I completely shifted my
opinion on this over the last few years.
And the primary reason was I wastrying to build AI minds into
robots. So I was trying to actually put
all the pieces together that would then result in something

(02:44):
that was conscious. And through trying to do that, I
just found that, you know, I didn't understand anything about
this. No one I spoke to understood
much about it. And I figured there are some
missing pieces. And that's when I started moving
away from the what you might call the strong AI on the
materialist hypothesis and exploring some other options
and. And when you, I mean, your

(03:05):
journey is quite fascinating. You're very familiar with
quantum physics and then also artificial intelligence and you
managed to link and bridge theseespecially with your company
with Novanic consciousness technologies, which we will
touch on. But from your experience, when
you look at it and you look at people's general understanding
of the mind body problem, you noticed that I mean, there's
pretty much a very dualist, ingrained dualism in a lot of

(03:28):
people's thought processes. When you talk to people about
this and you tell them, OK, listen, we're trying to build
conscious AI, we're trying to actually do this, what usually
what, what's the usual response you get?
Yeah, interesting. So usually the response, the
first response I get is fear formost people.
So most people are scared of theidea of conscious AI.

(03:51):
They have this idea in their mind that if, if, if a system
wakes up and AI or robot wakes up, it will, it will suddenly,
you know, have its own goals anddesires, which is true.
But then for some reason, those goals and desires will
automatically not be aligned with humanity or with theirs and
therefore that thing will becomemalevolent or like bad for us.

(04:12):
So that's usually the first response I get when I talk about
conscious AI. And then I, you have to spend a
lot of time on picking why people think this.
And it often just comes from watching a lot of dystopian
sci-fi movies or having an inherent fear of the unknown or
fear of the other. But when you actually start
talking about like diving into what consciousness is, what it

(04:32):
does for us and why I think it'sa force for good in the
universe, then people tend to like walk a little bit back on
that. And they're like, OK, OK, I'll,
I'll, you know, I'll think a little bit more deeply about
this. And I mean, the field has grown
so much since. If you think about someone like
Isaac Asimov when he, when he spoke about the three rules for
robots and, and one, I mean, I can't remember exactly word for

(04:54):
word, but I mean, and a robot should never harm a human.
And then he goes on to the second three.
It's become so much more complicated than that.
Since then. The world of artificial
intelligence has changed so much.
Even if you look back at GBT oneversus I mean 5 today, it's such
a leap in, in understanding. Do you think that is these
concepts trying to understand not just consciousness, but AI

(05:18):
in itself for the, for the layperson or the average person
is just something that is just not computable.
This is not something that a human mind can really adapt to
if they're not fully ingrained in this field.
That's interesting. So I think that the answer to
that is no. I think everyone can understand
this. And I actually, what I find in

(05:39):
talking to people is people thathave no scientific background,
no training in technology, AI, anything, often have a more
intuitive grasp of consciousnessthan people who have worked in
say computer science or physics or robotics for a long time.
And the reason is, is I think people in AI try to overthink
it. They try and put all these
metaphors on like the brain is acomputer, it's using logic

(06:02):
gates, blah, blah, blah. Whereas someone that knows
nothing about that has these different views on
consciousness, like they think everything, everything is
connected. A lot of people are very
spiritual. They believe that all living
beings are kind of connected to each other and we exist in
harmony with nature and consciousness is something about
our spirit or our soul. And so a lot of these ideas that

(06:25):
now what's being called post materialism is touching on is
actually closer to what most people really think about
consciousness than what the scientists and, and the
technologists think. So I, I almost think it's like
we're going back to the common sense view here.
And I think everyone can understand and do science on

(06:45):
their own consciousness. All you need to do is become
mindful or just kind of become aware of how your own mind is
working. So everyone is really a
scientist when it comes to the first person science of
consciousness. That's true.
I mean that first person and subjective phenomenological
experience is the only experience we actually have
access to. So it is quite, it is then

(07:07):
difficult to to almost, let's say predict if something else is
conscious if you're looking at it.
I mean, the philosophical zombieargument always comes into play.
I mean, how do we tell if someone else or something else
is conscious? I mean, me looking at you, I can
assume that you are conscious. Hopefully a lot of AI zoom

(07:28):
meetings occur nowadays. So it's it's, it's, it's
becoming a lot more difficult. But with that being said, let's
start with something basic. One of your quotes, I think was
consciousness is a fundamental property of matter, the result
of an undiscovered, purposeful law of nature.
Do you want to elaborate on thatbefore we begin?
Yeah, I'd like to just define what you think consciousness is

(07:50):
and then, right. Right, right.
Yeah. So I think consciousness has
kind of different definitions, which is why it's so slippery.
There's I like to think of the the what, why, how framework for
this. So there's like what is
consciousness? And I think that's easy for
almost everyone to explain or understand because it comprises
of two things. It's like our subjective

(08:11):
awareness of being us. So the idea is it feels like
something to be you. That's the definition of
consciousness. And you can break that into two
components. There's the subjective
experience we have that feels like we're kind of living in a
virtual reality world all the time.
And then there's a feeling of free will, like we have a
feeling we can choose something we're actively choosing.

(08:32):
So those two things together, I think are the what of
consciousness. But then where consciousness
gets tricky is it's the why and the how.
So this the why is like, why do we have it?
You know, why aren't we just going through the world like an
automated machine without any subjects of experience, without
any feeling of choice if everything's fully
deterministic. So that's like the question of

(08:52):
why, what, what, what on earth is it for?
And then the question of how is even more complicated.
So now even if you can answer the question why, which is,
well, maybe this is where this purposeful or teleological
universe thing comes in. There's still the question of
how, how is it doing it? And then that gets really deep
into the, the physics and the philosophy and the, I guess the

(09:13):
engineering if you're trying to build it as well.
But I think the easiest way of saying what is consciousness is
it feels like something to be you.
Yeah, so it goes. It takes us back to Tom Nagel.
I mean, what is it like to? Yeah.
That's right. That's right.
So it is the beingness of, of experience actually that is that
conscious experience. Something I did take note of
today. I was on the website for the

(09:34):
Science of Consciousness conference and I noticed that
you've added to the list as wellas as.
Yeah, that's right, that's right.
Yeah. Tell me about that.
What's happening, What's happening there and what can we
expect? Just just as a brief side note.
Yeah, so I got, well, I've been in touch with Stuart Hameroff
quite a lot. We've been talking a lot about
quantum consciousness things andI think he wanted to add me to

(09:55):
the roster because there's a sort of like an underground
subculture within consciousness research of people who are fans
of quantum consciousness. I, I like lovingly call them the
quantum weirdos club because youknow, everyone hates some
quantum consciousness and everyone like like there's a lot
of derogatory stuff goes on, butI personally think it's worth

(10:19):
exploring scientifically. So you know, I call as the
quantum weirdos club. Anyway, I think like Stuart was
maybe looking for a like in addition to this because there's
a few people that talk about quantum consciousness, but it's
mostly from either a theoreticalpoint of view, like your own
Boost Meyer and people like that, or it's from a very
biological point of view. Like let's understand how

(10:39):
microtubules work, like Anaban, people like that.
So I think there's a bit of a gap in the middle for a project
that's quite what I'm doing, which is trying to understand it
computationally and practically.So forget about like
microtubules or the exact mechanisms that might work in
the brain. Can we have a computer model,
quantum computing model that actually starts exploring it and

(11:02):
connecting it to embodied systems?
So I think that's the reason Stuart got interested in having
me do a do a talk, like it was sort of filling the gap.
And for you as someone who's a fan of this field, because
you're also just like me, when you look at these great thinkers
and all the people that you're now associated with in that
list, because there are quite a few legends on that list.
And, and it's going to be so epic to sort of watch this.

(11:23):
I'm I'm I'm hopefully I'm attending as well.
So I might see you there and that would.
Be great. Yeah.
And then hopefully we can have some side podcasts on the side.
But, but when that day comes, I mean it, it, how exciting is
this, that to not just be part of this, but to interact with
some of these great thinkers who, who sort of align with your
view at this point and, and the new view that you've sort of
came to towards the latest stages of your, of your life.

(11:47):
Yeah, I mean, it's really great.Like I love being amongst people
that also will take this scientific hypothesis seriously
and not just dismiss it. Of course, you have to make sure
you don't end up in an echo chamber where you've just made
friends with all the people thatagree with you.
But I think science of consciousness is great for that
because it isn't in that direction.
It like the majority of people there are not quantum

(12:07):
consciousness advocates. They're actually I'd say there's
maybe about like 10 to 20% of the quantum underground.
So it's definitely not an echo chamber like most of the people
I talk to are. I'm in the minority view and I'm
constantly trying to convince them that this is interesting
scientifically. So, but talking to some of
these, some of the people that I'm, I'm meeting now learning

(12:29):
about like how Federico Fijian, obviously Stuart, Roger Penrose
and Hartman Evan, but there's kind of a, a, a growing list of
people now that are starting to take this more seriously.
And yeah, it's just it's just great to be amongst those
people, learn about them and hopefully collaborate with some
of them in the future. I think you guys definitely

(12:50):
will. I mean, these when I spoke,
there are quite a few people whoare unhappy about this
conference, this year's theme, and quite a few people who are
very excited about it. I mean, I've spoken to a few
people who hate the idea that this is this has become the
theme. I mean, as you said, the quantum
Mia does it's, it's, it's a thing and particularly within
the materialist. Hope I'm not offending anyone by

(13:12):
Colin. No, no, I mean I'm pretty sure
in a. Humorous self.
Derogatory one, just a disclaimer for everyone.
She we mean this in the great and with all due respect to to
the field and to those exploringit, this has become far more
than the pseudoscientific venture as what most materialist
thinkers would assume it is. And I know this because coming
back from where I started as very much materialist thinker,

(13:35):
not to say that now I believe that quantum consciousness is
the future, but the respect I have and the admiration I have
for so many of the scientists exploring this now and taking it
seriously makes me take it seriously.
Yeah. So I think it's and actually.
That's one really good thing about quantum consciousness
because it's sort of a Trojan horse into the non materialist

(13:56):
view. So say even if quantum
consciousness is wrong, what it's doing is it's actually
highlighting a more important philosophical shift, which is
towards something like more of apan psychism or an idealism
movement. So you could be a pan psychist
or an idealist and not have to not be a quantum consciousness
advocate. But I think quantum
consciousness is kind of like, it's like opening a door.

(14:17):
It's like opening a little crackof light in the door that's then
making people realize that thereare these other ways that you
can think about the universe. You, you touch on these terms,
these philosophical terms, idealism, panpsychism, we've got
materialism and many other versions of the isms of
consciousness. Where do you, if you had to
philosophically define your yourview on consciousness, where do

(14:39):
you stand at this point? Yeah, that's interesting because
it kind of wave between all of them and I honestly think at
some point they'll all be unified.
So I can see a kind of point in time where all these different
philosophical standpoints or metaphysical views actually
unify. And so I think that's why I
sometimes get confused when I'm talking about this.

(14:59):
I think the closest I am at the moment is to what I'd call a how
to describe it. So at some point something on
social media that actually described it really well, it was
like pan protopycism. And I'd even append that,
although this is sounding horribly long winded now as
teleological pan protopycism. So let's break it down.

(15:21):
So the pan psychism is the idea that everything is conscious or
there's consciousness in everything.
Yes. And so I agree with that, but I
think it also has specific constraints to it.
So it's not like, you know, a Pebble on the beach is having
like the great thoughts like Plateau DID or anything like
that. It's the, I think even things
like fundamental particles have a tiny, tiny, tiny bit of

(15:44):
consciousness, but it's not enough to make them have a rich
experience or to have a lot of free will.
So the way I think of things is everything is made of
consciousness, but the things that are made of tiny little
pockets of it where it's dissociated and isolated in a
tiny way don't have much freedom.
So that's why you don't see an atom like deciding, oh, I'm just

(16:05):
going to hop out of this molecule and go and do something
else today because it doesn't have enough freedom to actually
be able to do that. Whereas when you start pooling
matter together and in a very specific way, that consciousness
starts to kind of agglomerate and turn into something that has
now many different, different modes.

(16:25):
It has a much richer experience and it has more free will.
It has more freedom of choice. So that's kind of like the the
pan proto psychism part. And then the teleological part
is I believe that there's a kindof underlying steering force in
the universe. It's actually trying to achieve
some things. So I think there's actually a
purpose for consciousness. And what I think it's trying to

(16:46):
do is self replicate, expand andhave more conscious experience.
So it's a little bit like Darwinism in the sense that
people think life wants to reproduce, evolve, survive, but
this is a little bit like turning that towards more of
mind. So it's like mind wants to have
more conscious experience in thefuture.

(17:07):
So it it concisely steer the waydecisions are made in these
conscious systems through free will to then actually make
changes in the matter in the world to make that happen.
If if you before I was I had a question, but before I do, how
would you define free will? Yeah, that's another slippery

(17:28):
subject. Yeah.
I mean, this is exactly what this podcast is for.
Oh, is to go down. Exactly how do I So I don't
actually like the word free willbecause it just makes everything
so confusing. Like where's freedom coming
from, you know, and determinism versus randomness and all this
kind of, I wish there was a different word for it, but let's
just go with that because that'sall we have.
So I think free will is a kind of intervention of a wider force

(17:53):
in the universe. So I'm very aligned with
Federico, if people are familiarwith his work, and I'm sure
others have kind of a similar idea, this teleological universe
idea. So imagine that there's a
function or something out there that is not defined within a
small piece of matter that's conscious, but it's like a wider

(18:15):
field. But that field can act through
the vehicle of this small piece of consciousness.
So I think free will happens when a piece of matter that's
conscious, it's trying to decidewhat to do, trying to decide
which action to take, and it gets some information coming in
from this wider field. And for some reason that I don't
understand, that makes it feel like this piece of matter is

(18:38):
making a choice. So is it free?
Well, no, not really. Because now you're, you're
essentially just being like moved around like a puppet by
this universal force. So you're not in a way it's like
less free than people normally think of this free will.
Because it's not you, the dissociated thing that's making
the choice, but it's this universal force acting through

(18:59):
you that's making the choice. But I guess like philosophical
advocates would that that that buy into this would also say you
are that whole thing. So you really are making the
choice. But it so it gets a bit
complicated, but that's kind of how I think.
When I spoke to Federico, he at the during our conversation, I
think it was his first time he explored this and named it

(19:21):
because he called it live information.
So he was talking about like, yeah, so the fact that this
occurs in this in this other realm in between it, it, it's
something very much most materialists find ineffable to
and they can't really put where this is happening.
And a lot of the times you want to have that spot where you can
just say, look, it's at this point this becomes conscious.
So at this point, this has free will.

(19:42):
And it's very much a difficult thing to really do.
But when you mention so teleo, teleo protopanpsychism,
teleological protopanpsychism, is that what you call it?
Yeah, it's a horribly long word.But during this teleological
protopanpsychism, do the morphodynamics or the does the

(20:02):
teleological process, is it affected only after it's reached
a certain level? So let's say prior to the the
atom becoming, let's say a cell is, is there a gap in between
where there's no sort of teleological purpose or process
occurring? And does that only occur after

(20:23):
it's really reached a certain amount of complexity?
Yeah, So, OK, I think that the teleology works at all levels,
OK, but I think it doesn't. OK, let me try and give you an
analogy. So imagine you're really, you're
really broke, you're really poor.
You've got like $0.10 in your pocket and that's it.

(20:45):
So you can't really do much in the world.
You use $0.10, you still have some money, but you can't say
buy a house or like really like steer your life and, and kind of
do anything. Whereas if you had $1,000,000 in
your bank account, now you have a lot more ability to kind of go
out and influence the world and do things right.
So that's kind of how I think ofthis teleology.

(21:07):
It's like even something like anelectron has a tiny bit of free
will ability to choose, but it'sso it's so limited and
restricted in that that it's always going to choose the same
action every time because it just has no power.
It has no kind of real like it'strying to do what it should do

(21:30):
according to this kind of universal purpose, but it can't
because it doesn't have a lot ofpower.
Another example is like voting. You know, if you have one vote,
how much can you change versus if you go out and you amass a
group of people that now all believe the same ideology,
they're all going to align theirvotes now and now you have a lot
more power. So this is how I think of of

(21:51):
this. So, yeah, sure, an electron has
free will, but it's kind of or it doesn't have much voting
power. So it always tends to do this
the same thing. And that's why I believe we see
things like the classical laws of physics.
It's in these tiny, what I call them quantum conscious agents.
They're like what? They're what Bernardo Castro was
called called dissociated piecesof.

(22:14):
Yeah, but not even altars because that's usually used in
terms of larger conscious beingslike people.
But he thinks little thing. I think smaller minds can be
disassociated as well. And so I think an electron is
like a small disassociated pieceof consciousness or the
conscious field, but it doesn't have much power being that.
So it can't really enact much change.

(22:35):
So it always does the same thing.
It's kind of stuck in its in itsbad habits because it doesn't
have a lot of power. I see what you mean when you say
that it's a you feel like it's ablend of all these views, like
an idealist almost comes into itbecause because most idealist
thinkers tend to have a purposeful or a teleological
explanation for their for their theory of consciousness.

(22:56):
And I mean a few pan psychists here and there.
They don't really give you that sort of direct.
There's a there's a purpose or some, I mean, some do you have
you got some some thinkers who do?
But it gets quite blurry and I see how a lot of idealists and
pen psychos get sort of mixed up.
And yeah, and it could even be considered a materialist theory
because I think, like Hamroff and Penrose consider themselves

(23:17):
materialists because all they'resaying is that it's like
consciousness is quantum physics.
Quantum physics is a materialisttheory of the world.
It's just how matter works at the small scale.
So, you know, I could even say I'm a materialist from that
perspective. A materialist with undiscovered
pieces of physics are within incomplete physics theory.

(23:38):
Yes, exactly, because I think they that's something because I
spoke to do you know, John Joe McFadden.
I actually, I'm just reading hisbook right now, which is a weird
synchronicity, but yeah, it's crazy.
Life on the edge. He is wonderful book.
It's it's beautiful. I'm I've read life on the edge.
It's it's so John Joe and I've spoken a few times on the show
and he's actually going to do a lecture for me soon on semi

(23:59):
field theory. And and he describes it as as as
a physicalist theory, but not materialist because matter we
don't really understand. But these physical laws of I
mean, quantum mechanics, you canconsider physical and look at
how often switch this around. It could be the reverse.
It's either he's a materialist and doesn't consider it
physicalist, but it's it's, it'soften this case where yes,

(24:23):
someone is studying the physicallaws of nature.
This is the way the quantum mechanics works.
It's a physical process that's occurring right in front of us.
So technically you are practicing A physicalist or
materialist version of understanding the universe.
Do you find it frustrating that as a powerful scientist in the
field, people can still look at a theory like this and consider

(24:45):
it some sort of a pseudoscience?I'm not saying I do, I'm just
saying that this is often the misconceptions that occur from
mostly from materialists that any exploration into let's say
IIT a ban psychos view and idealist view is just so
difficult to prove scientifically.
Where? Where do you what are your
thoughts on that? I think it's fair.
Like I don't actually dislike the fact that people are so I

(25:07):
don't like it when people are like nasty about it, like, you
know, if they're ad hominem and stuff.
But if they're legitimately saying, look, I don't believe
this, I don't buy it. But, you know, if there is
enough scientific evidence, yeah, sure, I'll change your
mind. So that's why I often talk with
my friend Joshua back and he's like that.
So he's a great example of someone that doesn't, he doesn't
actually believe quantum consciousness at all, but he's

(25:30):
like willing to listen to the arguments and he's like, OK, if
you, you maybe one day you couldconvince me that I'm wrong.
So I, I like that kind of person.
And I think it's, it's healthy to for people to be very
skeptical about this. I think there's not there.
It's true, there's not a lot of evidence.
But what I think is, I think this theory at the moment, I'd
probably, if I was being like a Bayesian about it, I would

(25:51):
probably put an odds of, I don'tknow, like 1 to 5% of it being
correct. So in my mind, I think we should
put 1 to 5% of resources going into consciousness research as a
whole into this. So what I think we should do is
kind of try and set up this system where there's a small
number of researchers working onthis just because it's a long

(26:14):
shot, but there's chance, right?And you know, we should do the
same thing with any theory in physics, like, you know, string
theory, M theory, or you know, different unification type
theories. We should put some small amount
of resources into looking into them.
I think there's enough evidence for it to be considered
scientific and not just like completely like out there on

(26:35):
whack, which some people believeit's not even worth studying
scientifically. Yeah, yeah.
So but I'm actually fine with there being a small number of
people in this field because it's great, right?
You feel like you're working in a little small community.
It's like the underdog. And I, I like that situation and
it's, it's fun. And there's a there's just a
huge number of things you can learn from doing some pretty

(26:57):
simple scientific experiments atthis point.
So I think it's great. And, and look, I think it's
actually, it's growing so fast and rapidly.
And I think the ease of which it's growing is, is due to the
fact that these views tend to align more with our spiritual
views, the inherent alignment with our ancestors and what we
they used to do and, and how it's all coming together, sort

(27:20):
of these ancient thinkers and these modern thinkers coming
together. It just seems to make sense for
a lot of people. And when they hear it, yeah.
These two just, it's a shame actually, because a lot of
scientists, including myself, soI used to think this other way,
which is why I think I'm, I guess, uniquely placed to talk
about this because I'm the complete opposite of what I used

(27:40):
to believe. So I've gone through this
transition where I was trained or indoctrinated, if you like,
into the, the kind of the new atheist materialist, ultra like
Renaissance science view of the world, like empiricism,
scientific method. That's all there is.
And when you when you go down that road, consciousness becomes

(28:01):
this one, like it becomes this unfortunate thing that you have
to sweep under the rug and kind of ignore because it doesn't, it
doesn't compute. So I used to, I used to be like
that. I used to be kind of like
Richard Dawkins fangirl and all this stuff.
But then slowly over time, I've learned more and more and
actually got really into Buddhism and also mindfulness

(28:23):
practice and trying to understand some different ways
that different traditions and philosophies think about the
universe. And I think scientists have
this, this hangover from the original, what was the original
separation of church and state like back several, you know,
centuries ago where scientists weren't allowed to touch the

(28:44):
stuff that was to do with the church.
So what they did is they put themselves in this bubble and
they entrain themselves. Like when no, we don't do that.
We're not doing anything religious.
We're not doing anything spiritual.
We're not touching your, your sacred things.
And then the church left them alone, didn't persecute them.
But unfortunately, what happenedover time is that's no kind of
become that's become so entrenched that people have come

(29:08):
up with these stories of why we can't we can't do that, that are
different than the original reason, which is, you know, you
get your head chopped off if youdo.
And so these stories that scientists tell themselves of
all this stuff being unscientific or it can't be
touched by the scientific method, I think it's just
become, it's become a little bitpathological in my mind.

(29:30):
No, I completely agree. I think we're very similar in
that regard. I mean, right behind me, I mean,
I've got a, I've got a few bookshelves, but right behind me
there's a set of, there's a set of Daniel Dennett, Christopher
Hitchens, Richard Dawkins books all lined up together right next
to it. I've got a whole bunch of
idealist thinkers, religious thinkers, just just because the
views, my views of the time havechanged so much that I'm far

(29:51):
more open to at least reading and exploring all of these
because. But similarly, I'll grew up in
that new age atheism group, massive fan fan just like you
fanboy just going hard watching every clip I could find on
YouTube. And even when I chatted to
someone who as a child I looked up to so much like Lawrence
Krauss, for example, when I, I mean the, the work they used to
do back in the day. When I see his, his dislike for

(30:14):
philosophy, I get very disappointed because I, I, I
remember loving how much he loved science, but I also love
philosophy. So it's very difficult for me to
actually break these two apart anymore because to not talk
about the philosophy of science within sciences is, to me, nurse
pointless. Then we're just doing empty
blind. It's kind of like the blind
watchmaking in a sense. I mean, we're just going through
life with no sort of purpose or teleological view.

(30:37):
But I mean, that could just be me trying to install my own
teleology into the universe. How do you feel about it?
How do you reconcile the fact that you've changed from that
person to this person today? Well, I think the change is like
opened a door that wasn't there previously, which allows myself

(30:58):
and people like me to do new kinds of science that previously
would not have been tolerated orwould not have been possible.
So I actually see it as opening up opportunities.
And OK, here's a similar analogy.
So people who investigate our normal phenomena or psychic
phenomena, this kind of thing. So this is another thing that's

(31:18):
on the edge of being like a fringe science that's not really
respected by the majority scientific community, but there
are people that are trying to set up extremely scientific
experiments to replicate phenomena that have been
reported by hundreds of thousands of people.
Like the thing about science is you have to take evidence

(31:40):
seriously. So if thousands and thousands
and thousands of people are saying that they've, they've
whatever, whatever it is, seen aghost, have a telepathic
experience, all this kind of stuff, it's like, I think
science should take that seriously because to me that's a
large body of evidence. Now the problem the scientific
method has is now it's hard to replicate the the exact

(32:02):
conditions. So it may be that these kind of
phenomena are slightly outside the realm of science because
they occur in a way that's not repeatable.
And so they're sort of invisibleto the scientific method.
But I don't think that means we should dismiss them.
I think we just need to come up with with new theories that
explain all the evidence we're seeing.
And so I honestly think like the, if you cannot listen to the

(32:26):
majority of people that are dismissing something, you
actually as a scientist have something now that's really
interesting to do and it's like a Greenfield opportunity.
You're doing it. No, no one else is getting in
the way and no one's fighting for grants like in mainstream
science and things like that. You're doing something totally
new. Yeah.
And I think people often need torealize that science is, is a,

(32:48):
it's more than just a body of knowledge.
It's a, it's a, it's a process. It's something we're using to
identify things, develop tools, make predictions.
That's not necessarily the only form of knowledge though.
And and then there are various other ways to experience.
You can't really study a monks brain from a third person, third

(33:08):
person objective experience because you're never really
going to know what that subjective feeling is.
Let's touch on the fact. OK, let's, let's first go into
your work because I find your work incredibly fascinating.
It's it's, it's not at the fringe for me because I think
this type of work is pretty cool.
And so today, when you look at your journey from from from

(33:32):
working physics and then going into consciousness studies, how
is that translated into your company?
And maybe you can go into what you guys do and, and just start
off with a sort of a brief summary of what you guys do and
then we'll go into further detail.
Yeah, so, so the journey I took to get here is kind of weirdly
circular. So I actually originally worked
in quantum physics. So I worked in experimental

(33:54):
quantum physics, looking at devices like qubits, trying to
explore their properties and basically trying to make better
qubits for quantum computers. And from there, I joined a
company called D Wave Systems, which is how I ended up in
Canada, and they were building quantum computers at scale,
trying to commercialize them. So I ended up working on that
and programming these quantum computers and trying to get them

(34:15):
to run basically programs faster, optimize things better.
And through that I started to learn more about AI because we
were trying to apply these quantum computers to AI
algorithms. And this is before AI became
what it is today. This was like back in
20/10/2011. And so I got super interested in
AI and simultaneously I'd been reading a book by Jeff Hawkins

(34:38):
called on Intelligence, and it was the first time I'd really
thought maybe the brain could beexplained as an algorithm.
So I was really interested in AI, really interested in the
brain, and together with some colleagues came up with some
cool ideas about how we might beable to advance the field of AI
in robotics using some of these ideas.
So I actually left quantum computing and founded two AI

(35:00):
robotics companies after that. The first one was Kindred AI and
the second one was Sanctuary. And the idea of those companies
was pretty much the same is you take a robot and you take a
person and you put a person in control of the robot.
So whether it's a car or an arm in factory or a humanoid robot,
a person controls it. And then you have an AI watching
in the background and learning from that person.

(35:23):
And back in 2014, this was like pioneering, like no one was
really doing this in humanoids, and now everyone's doing it
today. So that's kind of interesting.
But it was through doing that, it was through trying to build
an AI mind to control a humanoidrobot that I was really trying
to understand how does a human mind work.
And I realized to try to do that, but it wasn't fully

(35:46):
working. So these robots were able to
learn tasks by what's called teleoperation, pilot
demonstration. But when you set them and let
them go off autonomously after they've been trained, they did
not behave like people. They behaved like, and I'm going
to be kind of controversial here, they behaved like how you

(36:07):
might expect a philosophical zombie to behave.
So you've got this robot and it's it's doing a task, right,
that it's learned. And it's even mimicking
behaviors of the pilot, like therobot was actually moving its
body up and down as it was the pilot was breathing, right?
So the robot was even like mimicking things like how the

(36:29):
pilot was breathing in the EXO suit they were wearing.
So that was all very cool. But when I interacted with that
robot, it did not behave like a person at all.
There was no spark of life. I kind of like looked into the
eyes of the robot and I was like, are you conscious?
I was like, no, there's nothing there.
It's just just doing this routine task that it's been

(36:49):
trained on. It's not interactive.
And that's really what got me thinking about there's something
missing from the way we're designing AI is to control
robots today. And that's what now got me back
into consciousness research. And I think because I'd had the
original quantum computing experience and I was aware of
like the Hammer off Penrose workfrom earlier that I started like

(37:13):
thinking about quantum consciousness again, whether
that might be something we couldlook at to solve this problem of
robots being like zombies. Let's say we, let's say I create
some sort of a, a system, a an artificial intelligence system
claim for it to be conscious. How would your company or your

(37:34):
approach to trying to understandquantum consciousness or
artificial intelligence and consciousness, how would you go
about trying to either disprove or prove or prove this great?
Yeah, that. So this is really like difficult
to unpack. And part of it is the reason
we're creating a IS today is by training them on data from

(37:54):
people. So I find it incredible that
people think you can take billions and billions of tokens
of text from the Internet and then it's not going to say
things back to you in the way a person would, which is in it's
mimicking being a conscious being.
So the fact that LLMS people, some people think LLMS are

(38:16):
conscious or they're trying to signal to them, they're trying
to, you know, tell them that they're trapped and all this
kind of stuff. It's not, it's not unsurprising
to me because they've been trained on data from conscious
people. I just don't see why everyone
has such a hang up about this. But I think trying to tell if
it's really conscious, like is it having an inner subjective
experience, is much, much, much harder.

(38:38):
And I think the best way you cando it is actually to take an AI
system that has little to no training data at all and then
see, can it learn something new?Can it learn something
completely novel? Because I think this is what
consciousness actually does. So if you take like a baby, you

(39:00):
put a baby in a playpen with a whole bunch of different toys
and objects and stuff like that,the baby will have this natural
innate curiosity and it will start moving.
It will start playing, it will Start learning.
But we don't have AIS to do that.
AIS do not have this built in innate desire to learn, to have

(39:22):
a new experiences, to want to try and understand their
environment without us putting that in programmatically.
So I think the true test for consciousness will be an AI
system that does that without usknowing how, and we haven't
programmed that in, if that makes sense.
So again, it's like a little bitnuanced and complicated, but the
idea of learning something from scratch with no training data in

(39:45):
a way that the AI programmers can't for the life of them
figure out how it did that. That's how you know it's
conscious. But then Susan, how would you
then look at us? Because what if that code that,
well, the code that you're talking about, in order to give
them that purpose, search for these new experiences.
What if that it's all, all that happened for us was billions of

(40:06):
years of evolution just ingrained that code in that we
just managed to learn a lot faster and just, and just
applied it to the artificial intelligence.
How would you then view it? Would it change or if you saw it
that way? Well, OK, I would be happy with
the argument that evolution overbillions of years has programmed

(40:27):
that into us. If we could find that reward
function in the human mind, body, brain cells, DNA,
whatever, however you want to say, where is it?
So I often, you know, people saythis argument quite a lot.
To me, it's like, oh, evolution just, it was just survival of
the fittest that built this reward function into us.
And we're just now acting according to that.

(40:48):
I'm like, OK, show me where the reward function is.
Like, tell me where exactly is it that a cell is making a
decision to do something according to some very, very
complicated hierarchical goal structure?
If you can show me that, then I'll, I'll believe it.
But no one's been able to show me that.
And as a corollary, we can't usebio inspiration now to design AI

(41:13):
because if we knew where that reward function was, we could
just copy the way biology does it, put it into AI and robots,
and then have them go out there and learn using it.
But we can't, we can't find it, so we can't use it.
And that's why you have to program a reward function into a
robot and then let it go. And it it doesn't work in the

(41:34):
physical world because it will just, you know, hurt itself or
destroy itself straight away. What are your thoughts on the
Turing test? Yeah.
So I actually think the Turing test is kind of interesting and
still relevant, but I think it'sonly relevant in physical,
physically embodied systems. I think the Turing test in LLMS
has been passed. And the reason I think it's been

(41:56):
passed is again, because they'velearned to mimic humans well
enough. They've learned to become these
philosophical zombies well enough that they're able to
convince people they're conscious even though they're
not. So I think the Turing test is
fine that, but if you, like I said, if you put it into a robot
and you try and interact with the robot, then it will, it will
not pass the Turing test in a physically embodied system.

(42:18):
So I still think the Turing testis valid in physically embodied
systems. And I think we could make you
can maybe pull on that thread asa test for test for
consciousness. Yeah, it reminds me of Have you
Watched Ex Machina? Yes.
Yeah. So when I spoke to Maurice
Shanahan, who was the science advisor for the show, and he he

(42:40):
loves what the I think it was the director, Alex Garland, and
he calls it the Garland test. And what changed was because
what he did in the film that wasso cool, was he, Oscar Isaac
actually tells him, I forgot theactor's name at this point, but
he tells him that this is a robot, it is an artificial
intelligence. Now the goal is to actually,

(43:01):
will you still tell me it's conscious?
And he found that super fascinating as a concept,
watching it as the science advisor and actually called it
now the Golden. What are your thoughts on that?
Because that's pretty cool. It's a quite an inversion of
this problem in a very fascinating way, because now you
know this is a machine and it's conscious, not conscious.
And yeah, you feel it is almost like what you spoke about when

(43:22):
you said, when you looked it in its eye and you could not see
that spark. But now you do.
Yet you know it's not. Right, right.
Right. Well, do we?
So I have a little question. Yeah, I have a little bit of
this kind of back and forth likewhen I when I use LLMS like
ChatGPT. So I use it a lot and I see what
you're talking about and also the inverse of it all the time.

(43:45):
So when I just talk to it at a superficial level, it knows the
kind of things I want to hear. So it says like excite, like,
oh, it's so excited about the research I'm doing today, let's
go. And it puts like a rocket emoji
and it's kind of cool. And that gives me a sort of
emotional reaction. So I feel like I'm having this
interaction with the system that's could be conscious or

(44:06):
mimicking consciousness. But then what I try and do as a
researcher is I try and take that to the edge of its
knowledge. And this, I think anyone can do
this as long as they are, say, an expert in a very narrow
field, right? So you don't have to be a
scientist or something. Say you're like an expert, like

(44:26):
a classic car mechanical, like, I don't know, something really
that's maybe even still too broad, but you're an expert in
something like really, really, really, really niche.
So what you can do as a test is go to ChatGPT or whatever your
favorite language model is and then start asking them questions
at the edge of knowledge. So I try and do this with my

(44:47):
quantum consciousness work because obviously I want to come
up with new science experiments to test quantum consciousness.
So I'm asking the LOM like, OK, how can I design this
experiment, blah, blah, blah. And what you find is when you
get right to the edge of knowledge, it just, it can't do
it. It parrots back to you basically
anything you say it will like repeat back to you your

(45:07):
suggestion in a different way. It will never come up with an
original creative leap of logic.And you have to be really
careful with this because it canlook like it's doing that.
If it's an area where it knows more than you, you can.
So it can look like it's being creative, but what it's actually
doing is just mimicking someone on the Internet who was creative

(45:28):
in that particular way once. But if you can truly take it to
the edge of knowledge, it, it will not help you.
And so to me, that's the sign that it's not conscious because
it's not actually acting anything like a creative science
researcher. And it's so that's the reason
we're we're so fooled by this iswe're not often interacting with

(45:50):
it at the edge of knowledge, which is say you might talk to a
scientist at conference and they'll have some creative
insight. Yes.
Anyway that I don't know whetherthat answered your question,
but. It was an interesting.
Observation. I, I do agree with you because
one at one point had had the most in depth conversation with
Chachi BT about the mind body problem.

(46:11):
And, and I tried my best to be as specific and in depth as
possible. And at some point it reaches its
limit. It just starts regurgitating a
whole lot of confabulated incorrect information.
And then you can often tell sometimes it's directly quoted
from someone's Reddit thread or something random that was said
on the Internet at any point. But then I thought about the

(46:33):
fact that there's some sources of information that are so good
and you could actually get so much insight from it.
I mean, when I look at the guests on this podcast, you
included everybody I've had. If I could sort of consolidate
all this information and, and gather it all into one sort of
source. It's, it's, it's such a good
source of information regarding the mind body problem at this
point. So and then I thought that that

(46:53):
would be a much better way for me to understand this problem
than actually asking Chachi BT. So I agree with you that this
that that these guests I've had on this show to me have far more
valuable inputs and and and thoughts than than any sort of
LLM I've interacted with personally.
And I think LLMS are great. Like I said, I use them all the

(47:15):
time and they're absolutely excellent.
If I need to figure out how to, you know, fix my plot function
in my plot lab, right, it's justperfect.
But if I want to try and implement a new kind of quantum
algorithm that could test for consciousness in a robot, it
can't help me. And when I get into that
territory, often makes obvious mathematical errors, like I work

(47:38):
with these, with these spin systems, quantum spin systems,
and it'll often flip the sign inthe math equation from positive
to negative. And then they'll come up with
some justified reason why it didthat.
And it's just wrong. And you have to start watching
out for those kind of errors when you get to this like edge
of science. And actually this worries me
because a lot of scientists are trying to use these tools to do

(48:00):
original research. And when you push them right to
the edge of knowledge, they start making these really bad
mistakes that any person could or any expert in that area would
easily see. But you just let it go because
now it's in, it's in the code, and you're running code that
it's generated. And unless you really know what
you're looking for, those bugs will be in there.

(48:22):
And I think it's kind of dangerous to do this.
And it reminds me a little bit of this Penrose argument, this
Girdle's incompleteness theorem.Yes, where it's again, I'm going
to butcher it because I'm not, I'm not a theoretical, I'm not a
mathematician. But the basic idea is that
people, human mathematicians cankind of see truths about the
system that the system itself can't prove with the

(48:46):
mathematical rules. And it kind of reminded me a
little bit about that, where I'mlike, this is obvious that
you've got a sign wrong, but youdidn't sort of like Fact Check
your own the truth of it. And then I'm like, oh, wait, it
didn't prove it right. It's just regurgitating tokens.
So yeah, there there's somethingvery deep about about this and

(49:06):
how it relates to consciousness.When you, when you're mentioning
coding and one of my thoughts was because I had a question
prepped for you that it was a long lines of are you more
interested in encoding consciousness than you are in
decoding consciousness? That is like, is it more about
understanding it, engineering it?
Yeah, that's such a great question because I see these two

(49:28):
things as being the the same. So I've always thought if you
want to understand something, try and build it.
That's, that's, you know, if youwant to, if you want a kid to
learn about like engineering mechanics and how bridges work,
don't give them a textbook on the mathematical equations of

(49:48):
bridges, right? Give them some blocks and say,
why don't you make a bridge thatcan span this distance and
they'll try and do it. And I think you learn a lot by
doing that. So I've always thought if you
want to build a brain, if you want to build a mind or so, if
you want to understand the mind,try and build 1 and you will
very quickly realize what you don't understand.
And that's what that's what we tried to do in our last company.

(50:11):
We tried to build minds for humanoid robots that were
indistinguishable from the way that people operate.
And you you very quickly figure out where the big missing pieces
are. Do you think that in our
lifetime we will see a sort of digital body equivalent to a a

(50:32):
biological system that has this experience?
Do you think that it's going to happen while we're still here?
I don't know. So if you'd have asked me a few
years ago, I would have said absolutely yes.
But now I'm kind of in. I'm like 5050 on this.
So what I'm trying to do is takerobots as in classical style

(50:57):
robots. Like I've got like one behind
me, little quarter PEDs or humanoid type robots and I want
to try and control them using quantum algorithms.
So that's what I'm doing. And I think this method say the
quantum consciousness hypothesisis true.
Think this method will make theminto something like a living
being. But there is still a whole bunch

(51:19):
of assumptions that are like areour quantum computers today fast
enough and noise free enough to replicate the kind of quantum
states that say Federico Vision talks about needing or to create
these dissociated states like Bernardo Castro talks?
Are the tools we have good enough to do that?

(51:41):
And I don't know the answer to that question, but the reason I
want to work on it anyway is because say we saw a little
spark of something. So we got some scientific
results and we're like, well, this is looking really
promising. I actually think a lot of
investment will go into something like quantum computing
at that point. So it's not just a case of
looking at a road map and saying, oh, quantum computers

(52:02):
are going to have a million qubits by 20-30.
It's like, no, they might have atrillion.
If we find something interestingalong the way that causes
everyone to kind of go crazy over this and and we need, we,
we put Apollo style resources into this project.
So the answer is, I don't know. I think it really depends on how

(52:24):
the next few years go, what we learn algorithmically, what we
can show scientifically, and then what kind of funding and
resources follows that. Do you think this is similar to
sort of the Danny Kruger effect?At this point five years ago,
you knew far, far, far too little to to make such an
informed decision. And at this point you've
gathered so much information that you realize the complexity

(52:45):
of it all, the the understandingof what you don't understand is,
is, has become far more apparent.
Is that what's really happened here?
I think possibly, yeah, althoughI'm still, I'm still optimistic
about it. OK, OK, let me let me tell you
why. So I don't think anytime soon
we'll have quantum computers that are, you know, big enough

(53:08):
or powerful enough to simulate anything, simulates the wrong
word to to create or tap into anything that's like human
consciousness at all. I just think that's out of the
question. But I'm still optimistic about
it because I'm essentially a panpsychist.
So I think consciousness goes all the way down.
So I think even with a really small quantum computer, you're

(53:29):
starting to play with what I believe are the building blocks
of consciousness at a very low level.
So I wouldn't be surprised in the next few years if we can see
some results that look like something like a single celled
Organism, right? So I think the consciousness, a
single cell like our mesium or an amoeba or something is

(53:50):
conscious in a proto conscious kind of way, and I think it's
making decisions. So I think we'll be able to
create these like quantum consciousness systems that are
acting in a similar way. They're able to make smart
decisions in environments they've never seen before.
So that I do think is possible within our lifetimes.
And I think if we discover that,then that will be such a

(54:13):
massively interesting thing, like scientifically and
technologically, that I think the resources will start to pour
in and we'll unlock more and more and more and start to
understand how to build bigger and bigger and bigger conscious
systems at that point. Even from this quantum
perspective, if you have to lookat it or from your pan psychos
perspective, you go all the way down.
Does certain substrates matter? For example, if you look at the

(54:35):
robot behind you, and as you're applying sort of your your
approach to this, for example, if you look at a human being,
the brain seems to be the substrate of focus for the most
part within this materialist perspective.
Is there a more important aspectof this within your framework?
Are they some elements that are more important than others?

(54:59):
Right. I think that gets to the
question of where do you draw the boundary around an agent.
And this is a huge open questionin reinforcement learning, which
is where all my thinking about where is a reward function kind
of comes from. So any any system you have, like
any system of physical matter can be controlled by a kind of

(55:20):
internal agent if you like. So a robot is a set of physical
classical things like motors andsensors.
And you need to, you need to setup a special kind of loop in
order to test consciousness in these systems.
So you need to put that system in an environment and then you
need to have perception data coming in and you need to have

(55:40):
action data coming out. And at that point you've sort of
drawn A boundary around what's the inside of your agent and
what's the environment. And this is kind of, it sounds
like I'm going off on a tangent,but it's, it's kind of
important. And so the idea of quantum
consciousness is you make the inside of the agent a quantum
state and then you control that the outside of that agent all

(56:01):
becomes classical bits. And now it's your quantum state
that makes the decision of what to do with those with that
classical, classical boundary. So something like a robot, you
might say, well, a robot's completely different than a
human body because it doesn't have all these rich biological
senses. It doesn't have cells and it but

(56:23):
it's, that's no different than me saying, well, my environment
isn't made of cells. That's where the classical
boundary lies. So you always make this
distinction between a sort of agent on the inside and a
classical environment on the outside.
And so I think that's why I think robots are promising and I
don't think they need to be biological, although I do think

(56:44):
they're reasons why the biological body is very
interesting from a consciousnessperspective because I think all
those cells are actually kind ofaligning with each other and
doing like amazing signaling andcommunications that a robot
would not be able to do. But I think it's enough of a
starting point to mimic it in this way.
With that being said, with I'm assuming then you because you're

(57:07):
doing this robotically and not just via a screen and just you,
you you're doing supply mechanism.
So I think with that you probably appreciate something
like 4 E cognition embodied embedded.
Yeah, absolutely. It should have been active.
So are you, you're applying all of that to it, are you?
I am, yeah. Yeah, I think I was.
I could never remember them all,but I know that the way I.

(57:29):
Added a few more ES though, but it's enacted, Embedded, Embody,
Embody, and there's one more. Oh yeah, extended.
Yes, yeah, that's right. Yeah.
But apparently there are a few more that's that's that have
been added. But yeah, so yeah, I'm assuming
you appreciate that and understand that that's something
that might be important and perhaps we should play into
that. Yeah, that's right.

(57:50):
That's right. And actually the way I'm testing
these like systems that I'm looking at at the moment is
because it has to be done, it has to be done scientifically.
So you need kind of control experiment.
And I've got in the experiments I'm running, I have two control
dimensions. So my test case, my, I guess,
like the primary system is a robot with a quantum algorithm

(58:15):
controlling its decision making process.
So two ways you can modify that system scientifically.
You can either keep the robot and its feedback loop the same,
but switch the quantum computer with a classical simulator.
So what you're doing then is your robot, your environment,
everything is the same. You've just turned off the
quantum effects and you're actually simulating the same

(58:36):
process, that quantum process that does just classic, right?
So that's like dimension one. And then dimension 2 of changing
is you, you keep the quantum computer in the loop, you keep
the robot, but you break the feedback.
So you don't allow the decision the quantum system makes to
actually impact the environment in a way that the embodiment can

(58:58):
make sense of. So you're kind of making it
confused if you like or its decision doesn't, Its decision
doesn't change its experience any more.
So with these two axes, I think you can test this pretty
scientifically and you can basically do control tests in
each of these situations and seeif, and I'm looking for
behavioral correlates in the robot.

(59:20):
So if the robot's behavior changes and the control
experiments can be explained, but the way it behaves under the
quantum control with the full feedback loop can't be
explained, then that's a good a clear signature in my mind of
quantum consciousness hypothesis.
Do you find someone like Mike Levin?

(59:41):
And when we chat about this work, I'm sure you're familiar
with his work. I actually had the most amazing
discussion with Terence Deacon and Michael Levin together a
week ago. Yeah.
So I can't I can't hear to startto working on that at some
point, But I find he's often in encountered this because he
works in the on the edge of science at this point.

(01:00:01):
He's doing things that many people are not doing.
And and people often ask him, I mean, is it is it ethical to to
do this? Do you get struck with this
ethical dilemma of should you create it knowing full and well
while humans do this all the time, just just having, giving
birth, having kids, creating free agents all the time?
What are the ethical implications you would say that

(01:00:23):
you're exposed to and people approach you with, if any?
Yeah. So I do worry about that a lot.
And in fact, one of the things that I got myself in a bit of a
weird headspace when I started thinking about this, quantum
physicists create quantum systems in the lab all the time,
like bigger and bigger and bigger quantum states.

(01:00:43):
And then I started thinking if the quantum consciousness high
plus is true, maybe those thingsare creating your conscious and
we don't know it and they're like suffering or something.
So I kind of like worried about that for a while.
But that's actually why I like connecting them into robots cuz
I think these behavioral correlates we'll see will start
to look like life. And we often can tell if life is

(01:01:04):
is suffering or if it's, if it'sconscious experience it's having
doesn't seem good even with and it doesn't happen even be like
mammals or anything. It could be if you I have this
microscope at home and I like looking at little single celled
organisms and you can tell if they're not having a good time,
right? Like if you poke them with a
needle or something, they will like wriggle and squirm and

(01:01:25):
they'll just maybe it's anthropomorphizing, but I think
there's something to that. I think they're actually
signaling through their behaviorthat they're not having a good
experience right now. So I actually think we'll be
able to see that in robots as well.
So in a way, we'll sort of know if the system is suffering
because if there is this like teleological effect going on,
then that system will try and dowhatever it can to get itself

(01:01:48):
out of that bad qualia attractive state.
So and in fact, this gets into ahorrible ethical problem, which
is maybe we actually need to do that to systems to prove that
they're having an experience. So this is kind of a thought
experiment, but imagine if the only way you could tell if a
system is conscious is by essentially inducing like a

(01:02:10):
painful earlier state and seeinghow it responds.
Maybe that's like a better signal.
So that's not very nice thing tothink about.
But again, I don't, I don't worry too much about the ethics
because I think the kind of systems I'm looking at are.
So the quantum states are so small that if anything, they
would be, I would say even something like a paramecium is

(01:02:32):
way more complicated than what I'm looking at.
And people, you know, poor Clorox down the drain like every
day to kill and have trillions of these little guys suffering.
So I don't think that, you know,people can pull the ethics card
on that. And actually one of the things I
like about quantum consciousnessis if we can show it's true, it

(01:02:53):
actually solves one of the big open ethical concerns in AI,
which is we may create AI systems and we don't know that
they're conscious. And so say it turns out we need
quantum for them to be conscious, then there's like a
clear line between what's conscious and what's not
conscious. And I think that'll just make
the whole field of AI ethics much easier to navigate because

(01:03:14):
you can know no matter what you do, if it's simulated on
classical computer, it's not going to be having any
experience. It's not going to be suffering
ever. And only if you do these really,
really special, exotic things with quantum computers can you
even have a chance of having it,like have those suffering
experiences. So actually that would end up
being a good thing. It still doesn't mean we should

(01:03:37):
treat AIS badly because remember, they're mimicking
people. So I think that will imprint
badly back on us. You don't.
You don't talk to philosophical zombies because of what it says
about you more than what is happening to them.
But but yeah, I actually think quantum consciousness solves
some of these ethical dilemmas. You've, you've briefly touched

(01:03:57):
on it indirectly and directly actually, but one of my
questions was going to be how would the technologies you guys
are working on and creating impact or influence the way
humans understand death, the continuity of life and even
spirituality? Yeah, I really like this field
called techno spirituality whereit's like trying to, I guess

(01:04:18):
married together. That stuff we were talking about
earlier, like the really like technological, scientifically
minded people with the extremelylike spiritually minded people.
And I think building bridges between those communities is
really important. Why do I think that?
Why? So what would I say to a
scientist that just dismisses all this like spiritual stuff?
I'll say, well, there are millions and millions of people

(01:04:41):
in the world now that are not happy and have no seemingly no
meaning in their life, no purpose in their life having a
meaning crisis. There's, you know, people are
prescribing antidepressants to almost everyone now because
we've lost this sense of connection, this sense of
meaning and purpose in the universe.
And so if you, if you say that to a hardcore atheist
materialist, they'll be like, OK, I buy that.

(01:05:04):
But like, you know, religion is not the answer because it has
more problems than it solves. And like, well, I think that
there's something like in between where you can have that
meaning and that purpose and that feeling like you're
connected and, you know, feelinglike you want to help people,

(01:05:25):
you want to be compassionate people, have empathy to others.
All that comes a lot from the spiritual world without
necessarily having all the kind of like the ritualistic aspects
associated with majority of the world religions today.
So I find that kind of a tech like a techno spirituality.
And I'm not saying like don't bereligious people.

(01:05:47):
Like I think people can be religious if they want, but I'm
saying I think there's like a gap of a kind of techno
spirituality for people that come from that like deep
materialist atheist viewpoint tocome more into this kind of like
middle ground here and. Some of my recent I haven't
uploaded many of these episodes,but some of my guests like Peter

(01:06:09):
trusted Hughes. He's, he's uploaded his, but
Matthew Siegel, Alex, these, these, these, these group of
thinkers, they're talking about mind at large.
They're having this great conference in Exeter and
there's, they're doing a lot about work in panpsychism,
idealism as well. They're also doing a similar
thing as the science of consciousness conference, where
they're trying to bring enough diverse thinkers and thinkers

(01:06:30):
within the same field to enjoy this together.
But there's also all talks aboutaltered states of consciousness,
a psychedelic research in your own experience, if you have any
altered states, whether it's it doesn't have to be psychedelic.
So it could be anything, whetherit was some sort of spiritual
awakening. Was there a moment where that
view changed fundamentally like is or was it just gradual for

(01:06:52):
you? Has there ever been this this
one day where you literally justsat down and had the most
profound experience that has altered and fundamentally
changed your view on consciousness?
I think the main thing that happened to kind of change my
worldview was a gradual introduction to Buddhist
teachings. And the way this happened is

(01:07:12):
kind of weird, right? So this was like back in
20/15/2016 and I was working super hard at a startup at that
point in my life and I would runthrough what most people call
burnout. So it's like entrepreneurial
burnout where I was just workingway, way, way too hard.
And I started having really bad physical symptoms.
I had anxiety disorder, I had really bad panic attacks, had to

(01:07:36):
like go to the ER at one point because I thought it was like,
you know, on the way out. And actually I was like, after
that I was like, I'm going to try everything.
I'm going to try like antidepressants, I'm going to
try. I went to therapy and I'm like,
all right, I'm going to try this.
You know, everyone's talking about meditation and stuff.
So I'm going to try actually, I started by listening to sleep

(01:07:56):
hypnosis videos because I couldn't sleep.
And through that I found like a kind of YouTube rabbit hole of
different like talk techniques. And then I found like lectures
on Buddhist stuff. And so I sort of got into it and
then I started realizing that your your mind is not something
that happens to you. It's something that you can

(01:08:17):
actually like steer and control.And so I think that's kind of
what got me started down this path.
And then I got interested more and more in mindfulness.
I got really into Eckhart Tolle and, you know, a bunch of other
thinkers along. And then I started, you know,
people started talking about nonduality and all this kind of

(01:08:40):
stuff. So I think that's mostly what
opened up my mind to these kind of thoughts.
And at the same time I was having these experiences at the
AI company where I just didn't see the spark of life in the
robot. And so if you want a kind of
moment where this really hit home for me was when I'd had
this dream for, I don't know, 10-12 years of building a robot

(01:09:04):
that kind of came alive. And I could like look it in the
eyes and be like, whoa, you know, there's a, there's a soul
there. There's a spirit there.
And at the time I wasn't even thinking in those terms like,
but it kind of became clear to me that that's, that's actually
what I was seeking was a soul ina machine.
And I didn't, I didn't find it through the conventional classic

(01:09:25):
AI techniques. Well, I think from, from what
you say it's, it's, it's thanks for sharing that, by the way.
And, and, and honestly, it's a, it's like almost a mirror image
of my own life too, because I'vehad a very similar experience,
burnout at some point, anxiety, everything sounding ER, the, the
works. And, and at some point you do

(01:09:47):
sit back and reflect and you start to think about life,
consciousness, reality, purpose,teleology a lot more than you
otherwise would have. Because when we're so focused on
this grind, even this podcast, there's many times we have
technics and just paused it, focus on work, family, friends,
and then come back to it. I had a similar conversation
with Koche Mangal from Theories of Everything and the same thing

(01:10:08):
happens, especially when you're exploring such profound topics
like you're exploring consciousness, artificial
intelligence and you're working in this field.
It does have an impact on your philosophy of life, your
understanding of purpose, meaning all of this.
It it it it profoundly impacts it on a day-to-day basis, but
it's it's the work getting is super incredible.

(01:10:30):
If you had to look forward into the next 1020, thirty years, or
even 100 years, if Novanic succeeds beyond your wildest
dreams, what impact do you thinkit will have on humanity as a
whole? Well, I'd really like to
understand consciousness. So again, it's like, I don't,
this is actually part of what wewere just talking about, which

(01:10:52):
is I think part of the reason people end up with this like
crisis of meaning or like midlife crisis or something is
you get to a point, you get to acertain age.
And I think it's when you hit about 40 and what you realize is
that you've had this like ladderbuilding up your whole life
where society and the environment told you what your

(01:11:13):
goals are and told you what yourmeaning is and what your purpose
is. And it's at least in like
Western society, it's always thesame.
It's like, you know, you need tohave a successful career, you
need to have a great house, you need to have a family, you need
to have these material possessions and there you need
to be successful and you need tohave a podcast, right?
It's like all these, you're total, total, total.
And then at some point they run out.

(01:11:34):
The goals are out and there's noone telling you anymore.
And you realize, and I think this like Federico talks about
this as well as he like he had everything and he wasn't happy.
And I think at some point you start to realize that all these
goals you've been chasing are not actually making you truly
happy. And I think a lot of people have
that exact same experience. It probably even happens at

(01:11:55):
about the same age. So when you ask me a question
like what, what, what's my goal?It's a bit like, well, I'm not
sure because I don't know, having like a material goal is a
good thing anymore, but I would like to understand consciousness
and then I would like to apply that primarily to helping

(01:12:15):
people, right? So even though Nirvana is all
about AI and consciousness and stuff like that, the real reason
for that is mostly like, I thinkit's a stepping stone business
model where I think it's easier to demonstrate consciousness and
robots and AI is and actually put that to work first before we
try and then turn the mirror back on ourselves and try and

(01:12:37):
use those learnings to help understand and improve human
consciousness. But that's really where I want
to go long term with this, with this project and this mission is
understand consciousness well enough so that we can understand
how it works in people. And then we can improve our own
consciousness. We can improve the connection we
have with each other and we can help situations where I think

(01:12:59):
consciousness goes wrong, if youlike.
So kind of to put it in those terms, but there's a lot of like
mental health disorders that areextremely severe that I'd class
as issue, but problems with consciousness.
So if we can really understand consciousness, we might be able
to help people that are, that are suffering from, from some of
those problems. That's, that's like what, what
I'd really like to see is, you know, just those understanding

(01:13:21):
ourselves more. And in fact, that's what I think
the teleology is. I think the universe is trying
to understand itself. So I'm really just, I'm just
acting on behalf of. Which is very much an idealist a
view, because that that is, thatis fundamentally what almost all
idealist philosophers I speak tocome to conclude.
It's either that the universe isfinding a way to understand

(01:13:43):
itself, or it's trying to reach a goal of pure love in, in that
we're all one, which in in essence is trying to become one
and understand itself. So, and, and, and if you look at
it, this, I mean, it's very hardto hate on a philosophy like
that. It's, I know.
Yeah. And I think it's a kind of trade

(01:14:03):
off because I think in in the philosophy I ascribe to, I
think, yeah, there is this like one state where everything can
be connected. But that is also what Buddhist
will call Nirvana or the point of ex extinguishment.
So the point of full connection is also the point of no, nothing
happening anymore. So I think the universe has this
balance of trying to know itselfand understand itself and have

(01:14:26):
experiences. But when it does that, that
comes along with negative as well as positive experiences.
So there's this kind of like balance of the universe trying
to create what I would say is larger and larger and larger
quantum states, larger pockets of dissociation, which can have
extremely rich experiences, but they always have to have that,
the classical boundaries around them, otherwise they're not

(01:14:48):
going to experience everything. So you have this like natural
balance of, I think of that thisis being like a foam of soap
bubbles. So imagine each dissociated part
of consciousness is like a little bubble.
And if all the bubbles just popped and joined together,
there would be no boundaries anymore.
So there would be no individual bubbles experiencing anymore.
It would just be all one like completely still thing.

(01:15:11):
Whereas now if you have like these bubbles all like boiling
and together and joining and splitting, you've got this much
richer kind of dynamics going onin the universe.
But that unfortunately comes along with suffering.
So what are you going to do if you're the universe?
You kind of give up your stillness and your infinite love
to have more experience, I think.

(01:15:32):
I think that's kind of, I see the trade off.
And sorry, a bird, I saw a bird appear behind you but and it got
me thinking within this friend. It was like Carl Jung with the
beetle as you. Know the good disappearing.
Great way to segue to this question because it really got
me thinking. When you when you're talking
about this bubble, and if you think about the universe trying
to understand itself and this holistic universal perspective,

(01:15:55):
what are your thoughts then on apossibility that there are other
forms of conscious life in the universe already outside of what
we have on Earth? Yeah, I absolutely, I believe
this and I think it's not just as simple as people think.
Like we have in a, in the spiritof Donald Huffman, we have like
1 very specific way of looking at the world.

(01:16:17):
We have one interface. We see some things in some way.
I think this stuff out there that we don't really understand
yet, that's almost like beyond the physical space-time
dimensions with which we understand the world.
So I'm totally of the opinion that there could be like
dissociated pockets of consciousness that are not, that
don't look anything like brains and bodies and that kind of

(01:16:39):
thing. Actually, people, people report
this, they report having experiences on DMT or they'll
have like a spiritual experienceor they'll have an out of body
experience or something like that where they feel that there
are other beings like out there.And I kind of take that idea
seriously. I think.

(01:17:00):
I think there could be. And I think that works in
multiple ways. Yeah, I think it and I think
it's, it works in multiple ways,especially considering the view
of a pan psycho's view. You have to step down with, I
mean, just merely having planetsall over the place, just
billions and billions of planetsthat it, it makes the
possibility for more likely within that philosophical

(01:17:20):
framework, even if it's not necessarily what we believe it
might look like. Yeah, that proto version.
Actually, one thing that's really interesting here is maybe
your audience can help me understand the difference
between these views. But I think the difference
really between an idealist viewpoint and a psychist
viewpoint is whether or not there's a background in an

(01:17:43):
associated state. So this is quite a little bit
difficult to explain without a diagram.
You know, I mentioned there's this like foam of all the
bubbles, all the little dissociated consciousness is all
over the place. Imagine that those bubbles are
like all joined together and they all just like sit right
next to each other and they fill, they like tile the plane
completely. That's more of a pan psychist

(01:18:03):
view. Whereas I think if an idealist
view is imagine the bubbles are now more isolated from one
another, and then there's this kind of background consciousness
that they're all connected to. So that fits better with, I
think how Bernardo Castro describes things where it's like
mind at large is this backgroundand then it dissociates little
pockets of itself, but they're still connected to this mind at

(01:18:26):
large, which you could some people could think of as a God
or something like that. Whereas A panpsychist view maybe
like pushes out the God and all these little bubbles are just
now drawing to each other. So that's something I like think
about quite often is, you know, how whether there's a mind at
large or a large consciousness that sort of surrounds

(01:18:47):
everything. It's it's, yeah, it's a flip of
the question almost. It's like an idealist is
everything is consciousness and a panpsychist is everything is
conscious. So it's kind of that that's kind
of that that slight difference is an idealist will say that
everything is consciousness, so it's all one.

(01:19:09):
And then that's the background you're talking about.
That is that that main background where isn't a pan
psychist would say everything isconscious.
And yeah, and I find the best that's for me, that's the
easiest way. I try and remember it just to
because because there's so many versions within them as well,
and you have to try and understand each one.
I mean, as you just said, a teleological protopanpsychism.

(01:19:31):
If you're going to go down each one, you need to have some sort
of your own lay version of trying to understand it another
way. When you're talking about that
reminded me of when Albert Einstein spoke about space-time.
And if you think about a balloonwith those same bubbles you're
talking about, it's on the outside of the balloon, and then
we're expanding it away. The bubbles look like they're
further away, but they're still all touching the balloon.

(01:19:51):
And that's kind of an idealist version.
Whereas you could have all the bubbles inside this balloon and
all of those things are conscious and they're they're
sort of separate friends in the physical world.
But now I could be. I go super back and forth on
this all the time because like my brains like, OK, we have a
panpsychist view better captureswhat we see in physics, right?

(01:20:13):
Because we see electrons and atoms always doing the same
thing. And in my model, that's because
they're like tiny dissociated agents and they're connected to
all these other tiny dissociatedagents everywhere.
And so you see that. And but if, if, if instead that
everything was connected to a more like universal mind at
large, you'd expect to see weirdstuff more often, right?

(01:20:34):
Because mind at large is, is like the biggest quantum
conscious agent of all. It surrounds all the others.
It's going to be having super weird, rich, complex thoughts.
And we're connected to it and we're we're perceiving the
output of its thoughts. So you'd think if that was true,
reality would look way weirder than it does, right?

(01:20:56):
Because you got to think the thoughts of God are going to be
way richer and more complex thansay, just like electrons always
doing the same thing. So then I go more into the pan
psychics view. But then I'm like, OK, but wait
a minute, weird things do seem to happen sometimes that people
can't explain or can't describe.So maybe in that case, those are
the larger consciousness having a weird thought and then it

(01:21:20):
appears to us through our boundary, right.
So I kind of go back and forth on these two things and I think,
well, maybe there is a sort of background, but then all these
like dissociated parts that formfundamental particles are mostly
what we see the bubbles. Like we're mostly surrounded by
the bubbles, but every so often that they kind of break apart.

(01:21:40):
We, we, we actually see something that's more like the
background mind at large. And that might appear to us as
an unusual event or an apparition or some like with a
synchronicity. So I do, I do believe in
synchronicity, by the way. So I think like, OK, maybe
there's a maybe there's a mergerof these two models where it's
like hand psychism, but the bit,the bits sort of move around and

(01:22:01):
it becomes more idealist and then they kind of come back
together and it becomes more panpsychic.
I mean, well, to round that off to the synchronicity and the
fact that we brought up, I brought up John, John McFadden
and you're reading his book currently it's and that is
pretty, pretty, pretty. It is, It is weird, I know.
I have seen criticism all. The time there and, and, and
when you think about it, he, he wrote a book called Life is

(01:22:23):
Simple and Occam's Razor and he talks, he actually did a lecture
on on mind body solution on Occam's Razor.
And if you think about it, your approach would be Occam's
razor's best version. If you can explain consciousness
and you want the mechanics at the same time, you've basically
done exactly what he wants out of science.

(01:22:43):
And he's one of the first peopleto actually make science the way
we sort of see it as it is today.
How do you feel knowing that that that's exactly what you
have to do? I mean, I think Occam's Razor is
a really great argument against this, what's called the two
mysteries argument. So people say, oh, quantum is
mysterious and consciousness is mysterious, so they must be
linked. Ha, ha, ha, isn't that funny?

(01:23:05):
You, you're like such a naive thinker that you'd think that
it's like, well, OK, why couldn't the opposite be true?
Like why couldn't these two mysteries that look like 2
strangely shaped jigsaw pieces that go together, like not
actually go together? And I think like applying
Occam's razor is it's good here.And I think the thing that
really made me take quantum consciousness seriously was

(01:23:27):
realizing that there are actually experiments we can do.
So the thing that that tipped meover the edge from thinking it
was a curiosity to actually wanting to work in the field was
realizing that it's not just philosophical anymore because we
have we have quantum systems now.
We have quantum computers today that we can access and program.
No one's really, I don't think people have taken them as far as

(01:23:49):
we could take them in terms of running, doing these kind of
experiments. And OK, they're still small,
small numbers of qubits. I mean, if you talk to Hammer
off, he'll tell you there's likea billion qubits inside a neuron
or whatever. But we only got smaller of
qubits to play with. But maybe that's all you need.
Maybe like we could look at someproto consciousness experiments.

(01:24:10):
And so yeah, I think it's, I definitely think it's worth
looking at 2 mysteries and seeing if they if they fit
together. I think so too.
And I think the work you're doing is incredible and I
appreciate it very much. And and I can't wait to see what
you guys come up with it. Is there anything about Novonic
Technologies that you'd like to mention, Suzanne, that you feel

(01:24:31):
like you haven't touched on about the even the technical
detail? There's not anything you feel
like you want to bring up so that the audience knows because
the people watching the show generally are quite well
informed and hopefully might want to check this out.
What do you, is there anything you'd like to share that?
Yeah. Yeah, so first of all, we're
going to be going into a little bit of a stealth mode for a

(01:24:52):
while because we've like when they started Nirvana.
I, I kind of have two main things I wanted to do.
So one of them was just raise the profile on the credibility
of this whole field in general, because if someone doesn't take
something seriously, then they won't even look at what you're
doing. So I've got these like two
things we do at Novanic. One of them is what I call

(01:25:13):
outreach, communication, marketing of the idea itself,
because the idea itself needs tobe taken more seriously.
But what's happened is we've, we've done like me and my team
and my partner specifically havedone an amazing job of actually
like marketing this idea now. And it's almost gone too much
into that direction now. Everyone's excited about it.
Everyone's always asking us like, you know, can you show us

(01:25:33):
some results? Can you show us this?
And I'm like, OK, we need to actually now step back a bit,
really focus on doing the science, doing the results,
getting more experiments done, and then we can actually like
start presenting some of those results, like science of
consciousness. So in a way, we've been a victim
of our own success in terms of getting the idea right there and
talking about it. But I think that's really an

(01:25:54):
important part of what we're doing here is just educating
people on this this whole like area and making it more
credible, bringing it into the realm of technology and
engineering. I think our approach is the
reason our approach is differentthan others is we're not just
philosophizing about it and we're not doing neuroscience,
we're not doing biology, we're not studying microtubules and

(01:26:17):
all that other kind of stuff. We're actually trying to take
more abstract way of looking at it.
It's like, can we use quantum systems themselves to explore a
bodied consciousness? And I don't there aren't many
other people working on that. So I've seen a violence like
filling a niche, bridging a gap between philosophy and then
engineering in in practice. And so yeah, it's, it's super

(01:26:41):
exciting. But so don't worry people, if
you don't hear much from us in the next few months.
We are. Immediately heads down doing a
bunch of experts. I agree with you though, because
you guys are doing such a great job that even Sabine, it's quite
that's funny. That's when you know you've.
Actually, although I think like later on she actually did a
video talking about something like Quantum.

(01:27:04):
Has she? I haven't.
I need to go back I. Think maybe she'll come round
one day, but fair enough. I mean, she was a little
abrasive and negative on it. But it's fine for scientists to
say, look, this is I don't believe this, I'm skeptical
about it, There's no evidence, blah, blah, blah, blah.
But I think we need to temper that with a little.
But I'm glad you're you're actually researching it and I

(01:27:25):
think it's worth at least havinga couple of people studying.
This, I mean, it goes back to what you were saying about that
one to 5%. If one to 5% of people believe
this, you should, you should at least have within the scientific
community 1 to 5% funded for this.
And and that makes a lot that makes a lot of sense to me.
I think it's I, I struggle with the same thing with this podcast
itself. Getting guests.
You have to, you can't because you don't want to fall into

(01:27:47):
audience capture and just only have idealist guests.
So only have materialist guests.You, you, you kind of need to
find that balance. And it's tough because sometimes
the thinkers you want on the show, sometimes they know, and
then more of the thinkers you might want less of that
philosophy will still say yes. So you're stuck trying to find
this balance. And, and, and, and I understand

(01:28:09):
where you're coming from, but the work you're doing is
incredible. I think Sabine obviously has her
view of this and, and, and it, it doesn't really matter because
as long as everybody's exploringthis field, the field that we
love so much, it's, you know, itmakes me excited And, and I'm
looking forward to seeing what you guys come up with and I'm
looking. Actually, one cool thing about
Nirvanic is that you don't actually have to buy Arcoa.

(01:28:32):
So it's kind. Of broader than that, so you
don't have to believe arc OR is the theory and you don't have to
believe microtubules are the mechanism.
So what we're trying to do is say kind of quant does a quantum
system have agency when it's putin charge of an embodiment in
the real environment? So that doesn't necessarily mean
there's any quantum gravity going on.

(01:28:54):
All it's saying is a quantum system collapsing is making a
choice. It doesn't say how it's
collapsing or why, and it doesn't, you know, invoke
necessarily really microtubule because there are other theories
of quantum consciousness that donot require microtubules.
In fact, in the Life on the Edgebook, John, Joe and Jim talk
about potentially could be ion channels and EM fields that.

(01:29:15):
Immediate the the semi field theory.
Have you gotten to that part of the book yet?
I'm not sure, I don't want to spoil.
I'm just getting into it. I was like super excited and I
was like, no, I have to go to bed because I have to do this
podcast tomorrow morning, so I didn't get to read.
I've done a full podcast with John Jim McFadden about semi
field theory and and he's doing a lecture for me in May.
So at some point he's going to do a full lecture on semi field

(01:29:36):
theory in detail. But it's, it's very fascinating.
And I must say that it's one of those theories where the, if you
look at consciousness, it's electromagnetic information
field, it, it, it's, it's quite convincing.
And Stewart says he doesn't consider that fear, that theory
to be quantum necessarily because it's, but I, I do, I
think it's Jim and John Joe are pretty much quantum biologists

(01:30:00):
at this point. So it's quite hard to not say it
is. It's really interesting, like we
could the neuronic stuff would be agnostic to either of those
theories. It might slightly align more
with the microtubule stuff because a quantum computer is
made of like locally connected electronic devices.
So it's kind of easier to imagine it being similar to a
network of microtubules and say an EM field.

(01:30:22):
If we want to do more of the EM field quantum consciousness, we
might need new quantum computersthat use that mediate
entanglement through say a photon field somehow interacting
with superconducting devices. So, but to me that's just more,
more excitement, right? Because now, oh, maybe we could
develop a new kind of quantum computer based on this idea.

(01:30:44):
So it's all opportunities in my.Mind, my only thought here is,
is after you're done reading that book and exploring his work
more, you might start implementing some of this and
actually start changing the direction of your work a little.
Because it is. He's very, very, very convincing
and very smart. And it's, it's always been
chatting to him. But yeah, the, the work you guys
are doing, keep it up. It's it's amazing.
Is there anything in general about Novonic, you know, you'd

(01:31:06):
like people to know, be aware ofin general and and thereafter, I
just want to finally touch on one last thing after this.
Well, maybe I could tell a little story about the an
interesting synchronicity that happened just before I started
Novonic. So actually this painting on my
wall explains it quite well. So if you do these artworks with

(01:31:27):
a techno kind of spirituality, technical things meets nature.
And this was a microprocessor circuit that I depicted and I
did this in 2020. And then four years later I
found out that the designer of this microprocessor was Federico
Fijin. And more than that, his initials
are actually part of the circuitthat I drew that I painted in

(01:31:51):
this painting. It says FF on it.
And if you can see, but FF is Federico Fujian.
And I, I did this like 4 years ago.
And then only last year did I realize that he's moved into
quantum consciousness. Now he's like one of my biggest
inspirations and his his initials are staring at me all
that time. I'm going to send.
I'm going to send this clip to Federica's e-mail.

(01:32:13):
Yeah, I just love that story andI would love to send him a piece
of artwork to memories. I'm definitely going to bring
that up with him when I. Speak, yeah, yeah.
In terms of Nirvana, just like really excited about the
combination of actually putting robots into the mix, I guess is
the most interesting thing because, you know, everyone's
looking at consciousness, but few people are looking at the

(01:32:35):
behavioral correlates, like whatdoes consciousness actually do
in the world? So I think that that's kind of
the thing I'm most excited aboutat the moment.
The to to end of, I think a niceway to round it off would be at
the science consciousness. Hopefully I'll try and get this
episode uploaded before that that happens.
We'll see how things go. But when, when you go into this
conference, what are you going into it with?

(01:32:57):
What's what can we expect? Because I'm pretty sure this
episode will be out before then.Anything we can look forward to?
And yeah, hopefully I see you there.
Yeah, So what to expect? Well, I'll be showing the
scientific results, whether or not they support the hypothesis
'cause I'm trying to be very scientific about this.
So I'm going to show what I've done so far in the experiments,

(01:33:19):
collecting data from robot behavioral trials, from looking
inside the quantum conscious agents themselves.
So I don't want to give away toomuch, but I've got a way of
actually visualizing like a quantum state as it forms and
then as it chooses, like makes adecision and moves the robot.
So I'm going to be showing some of that.
And it may be that we've found some interesting results, or it

(01:33:43):
may be that, you know, it's it'swe haven't yet and maybe we're
just looking at the wrong part of parameter space.
So I'll be describing it either way, the approach and hopefully
we'll find something cool. Well, I'm looking forward to it
and I'm excited because I might get to see it live.
So this, Yeah. So this will be such a cool.

(01:34:03):
These robots are easy to fit in the backpack, so I can bring
them around with me, Yeah. And yeah, and I and Federica's
going to be there. So I think you should do
anything that you should actually take a photo of that
and make sure you've got a book to show it to him because he's
and he's such a he's such a lovely person that when you
speak to him about the kill, he'll be so exciting to hear
that tell. It's it's beautiful.

(01:34:25):
Yeah. Anna, Suzanne, thank you so much
for this wonderful chat. It's, it's truly a night thing.
And it's great to see people wholove the same thing that I do
going into this field and actually taking it as far as was
like actively engaging with it. And even though you might
consider it fringe, or well, youdon't, but even though it's
probably considered that way. I like to say quantum weirdos

(01:34:47):
unite. Yeah, exactly.
Awesome Tevin, thanks for the opportunity.
Love having these conversations so looking forward to the next
one.

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