Michael Pollan explains why AI will never replicate human consciousness

Michael Pollan explains why AI will never replicate human consciousness

By Claire Cameron edited by Jeanna Bryner

Of all the leading contenders for the hardest problem in science, perhaps the most important to our lived experience is this: What exactly is consciousness?

Humans have very complex brains and, for some of us at least, even more complex emotions. We can think and feel; we are aware of ourselves. We can create new ideas. But the origin of this awareness remains a mystery. And the reason we feel anything about anything is obscured by subjectivity.

“The only tool we have for exploring consciousness is consciousness itself,” says Michael Pollan, renowned science journalist and author of the new book. A world appears: a journey into consciousness. This conundrum—and how to potentially resolve it—guides Pollan’s examination of consciousness, shedding light on both the science and the philosophical dilemma it poses.

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According to Pollan, it is probably impossible to fully explain how we know we are conscious using conventional neuroscience research methods such as brain scans. “One of the hypotheses of the book is that it may take a scientific revolution to really help us,” he says.

There are some 29 competing theories of consciousness. We can trace signs of consciousness and emotion in the brain. We can be certain that we, as thinking individuals, are conscious and can infer that other humans are as well. But, according to Pollan, that’s it.

One of the major questions Pollan addresses in the book is whether we will ever be able to recognize consciousness in another species or entity. Detecting such a phenomenon in an organism or entity that looks and behaves nothing like a human will be “really difficult,” he says. An artificial intelligence, for example, could express its consciousness in a very different way from that of humans, he adds.

“I don’t think it will be like ours,” he said. “Because ours is largely the product of our bodies and our human vulnerability.” One of the researchers he cites in the book is Mark Solms, whose lab is trying to develop conscious AI by making it sense uncertainty and conflicting needs.

“We may have to become sort of plurals of consciousness and stipulate that there will be many different kinds,” Pollan says.

Pollan spoke to ScientificAmerican Brianne Kane, Associate Books Editor. You can listen to the podcast interview here.

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