#105 Meet the AI Researcher Proving Machines Will NEVER Be Conscious!

Dr. Erik Bekkers is an associate professor in Geometric Deep
Learning at the University of Amsterdam, an ELLIS Program
Director, and one of the most original thinkers working at the
intersection of mathematics, AI and consciousness.


He reverse-engineered how the human visual cortex processes
reality using the geometry of curved spaces — then used those
same principles to build AI architectures that outperform
standard deep learning. He recently published a paper arguing
that AI will never be conscious, introducing a framework called
Biological Idealism.


Expect to learn why your brain lifts reality into a
higher-dimensional space just to see a straight line, what
autopoiesis is and why it might be the dividing line for
consciousness, why psychedelics decreasing brain activity while
increasing experience is a problem for materialism, why firing
neurons are an appearance of experience not the cause of it, why
AI leaders claiming machines might be conscious is dangerous, and
much more


...


Timestamps:


00:00 Why Erik Wrote the Biological Idealism Paper


02:00 The Materialist Bias in Society


04:23 Does a Machine Have Consciousness?


06:29 Can You Be a Materialist and Value Experience?


08:24 The Map vs The Terrain: What is Matter Really?


11:03 Bernardo Kastrup and the Path to Idealism


14:11 Psychedelics: Less Brain Activity, More Experience?


15:57 The Idealist Explanation of Neural Correlates


19:54 What Primes Someone Towards Idealism or Materialism?


24:17 Autopoiesis: The Self-Creation of Life


27:32 How Autopoiesis Works in an Idealist Framework


33:30 Where Physicalism and Idealism Actually Agree


41:15 Finding Common Ground Across Metaphysics


47:17 Why Are Some Creatures More Conscious Than Others?


50:18 Donut-Shaped Geometry in Brain Activity


54:46 Can Mathematics Ever Model Consciousness?


59:33 The Geometry of Experiences Explained


01:04:31 Continuity of Brain Structures Across the Animal Kingdom


01:06:03 Can We Make a Machine Autopoietic?


01:09:37 The Robot That Plugs Itself In: Is That Consciousness?


01:14:00 What Would You Do With 100 Billion Dollars?


01:20:20 Will We Ever See a Conscious Machine?


01:24:11 AI Propaganda and Emotional Manipulation


01:27:56 Hinton and Amodei: Is It Dangerous to Call AI Conscious?


01:31:43 The Ethics of Machine Consciousness Research


01:35:39 Animal Suffering, AI Spending and Asking the Right
Questions


01:38:10 Closing Thoughts and Anna Ciaunica's Influence


...





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