Azeem Azhar

You are part of that intelligence wave, that artificial intelligence wave, and you also believe the world is changing.

You've called for a humanist superintelligence.

You've warned about the risk, the trajectory that takes us to AI psychosis if people believe AI is conscious when it's not.

And I think we both agree that we need new operating principles for this new era.

Let's get to that question of where it really gets interesting.

You wrote this great essay back in the summer of 2025 about seemingly conscious AI, and you're worrying that as AI becomes more capable, more autonomous, and more embedded in our daily lives, people will start projecting consciousness onto it.

They'll fall in love with it.

They'll believe it's God.

They'll advocate for its rights.

They'll take its very bad advice at time to time.

And you think this is dangerous, not just for individuals, but for society.

So let's start there.

Jeff Hinton, he is the godfather of deep learning, a man you know very well.

He's a Nobel laureate.

He said that AI is conscious and that there really is a there there.

Why do you think Jeff is wrong?

I mean, some people might say that the process of a biological system going through its own set of selection pressures and then individual survival pressures is a very, very particular path

that determines how an organism or an agent is successful or not successful.

And then you might argue that, well, because silicon-based systems like these models have a different path, they will look different.

But they still have their process of rewards and reinforcement learning.