Max Tegmark

I mean, would you prefer it?

What would you prefer?

Would you prefer that it's actually unconscious so that you don't have to feel guilty about switching it off or giving it boring chores?

Or what would you prefer?

And I think we will probably be able to build things even if we don't answer that question.

But if we want to make sure that what happens is a good thing, we better solve it first.

So it's a wonderful controversy you're raising there, where you have basically three points of view about the heart problem.

So there are two different points of view that both conclude that the heart problem of consciousness is BS.

On one hand, you have some people like Daniel Dennett who say consciousness is just BS because consciousness is the same thing as intelligence.

There's no difference.

So anything which acts conscious is conscious, just like we are.

And then there are also a lot of people, including many top AI researchers I know, who say, oh, consciousness is just bullshit because, of course, machines can never be conscious.

They're always going to be zombies.

You never have to feel guilty about how you treat them.

And then there's a third group of people, including Giulio Tononi, for example, and another, and Christoph Koch and a number of others.

I would put myself on this middle camp who say that actually some information processing is conscious and some is not.

So let's find the equation which can be used to determine which it is.

And I think we've just been a little bit

lazy, kind of running away from this problem for a long time.

It's been almost taboo to even mention the C word in a lot of circles.