The idea that consciousness is part of the quantum realm has now gotten people working in the artificial intelligence field quite excited, frothing at the mouth in fact, because surely one can put two and two together and create a conscious AI using quantum computing?
That would be the sense of it, but I’m not convinced for a few reasons.
Researchers and companies like Google’s Quantum AI Lab and Nirvanic are exploring whether quantum computing can help unravel the mysteries of consciousness, including its potential quantum origins.
Hartmut Neven suggests quantum phenomena like entanglement could underlie consciousness and proposes experiments entangling human brains with quantum computers to test the hypothesis.
Nirvanic aims to merge quantum computing, artificial intelligence and theories of quantum consciousness to develop AI systems capable of moral reasoning and adaptability in dynamic environments.
The first reason is pretty obvious.
There is a vast ocean of venture capital money being poured into artificial intelligence, but differentiation has all but disappeared, and many feel that there’s a market correction coming soon because the levels of hype and investment cannot be sustained where there’s a fundamental lack of proof of return.
The second reason is a fairly cynical one.
As a result of the above, AI has overtaken Quantum Computing in the investment and hype stakes recently, but not without taking some flak about the hype and lack of moats many startups fail to dig for themselves. Even Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s leather jacket-adorned self-appointed rockstar CEO, took a pop at the quantum crowd for self-serving reasons that saw their stocks take a hit.
“Very useful quantum computers are still a few decades away. If you said 15 years for very useful quantum computers, that would probably be on the early side,” he said, whilst talking up his GPUs, so it makes sense to bridge these two industries vying for attention by claiming that we can make conscious robots and merge humans with artificial intelligence this way.
Ray Kurzweil will be writing another book on this. Again.
The third reason? Biology.
This one, which is a sticking point that fails to be addressed by current theories, is that they all ignore quantum biology as an integral part of consciousness and just go for scale. This is an inherent problem across all of the tech sector driven by startups and VCs: the belief that scaling is the answer to everything.
Even Neven’s proposal of entangling a human mind with a quantum computer assumes that all that is required is computational entanglement. He also challenges Penrose’s assumption that consciousness arises from quantum wavefunction collapse, instead suggesting that consciousness emerges when superposition forms. His approach assumes consciousness could be expanded by adding quantum superpositions, whereas I suggest it may not be just about information capacity. I am sceptical that quantum entanglement alone can sustain consciousness unless it also integrates biological quantum processes.
Again, just throwing larger numbers against the wall and seeing if it sticks is not a strategy.
This idea will no doubt be reinforced by Microsoft’s latest announcement about the
Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem that the press release for Majorana
But, again, using qubits alone would not be enough to generate true consciousness in an AI system. The assumption is that enough computational complexity, whether classical or quantum, will eventually lead to consciousness.
My challenge is that consciousness isn’t just complex information processing but an active, nonlocal quantum state interacting with biological matter in specific ways — hence why I started looking into Quantum Stream Theory of Consciousness, a meta-framework.
And doesn’t mean just throwing
Another supporter of trying to “engineer” consciousness using quantum computing is Dr. Suzanne Gildert of
Gildert is a quantum physicist and AI roboticist with a background at pioneering companies like D-Wave (the world’s first quantum computer company), Kindred AI, and Sanctuary AI. She is currently the founder and CEO of Nirvanic, a company explicitly aiming to develop “conscious AI” through engineering quantum consciousness.
Gildert’s work is predicated on the hypothesis that consciousness is not merely a product of complex classical computation but requires a quantum component. Her approach is both scientific and engineering-led: to treat quantum consciousness as a testable hypothesis and attempt to build it into AI systems.
Her research includes treating consciousness as leveraging quantum properties like superposition (the ability to be in multiple states at once) and entanglement (the interconnectedness of particles regardless of distance) to perform advanced processing that classical systems cannot. This quantum processing is what allows the mind to navigate novel, nuanced, and emotionally significant situations that go beyond automatic, “subroutine” responses.
However, Gildert’s central engineering-based methodology is that by attempting to build a conscious AI, we can test hypotheses about human consciousness and get closer to understanding what it is and how it functions. Her work at Nirvanic is an explicit attempt to turn the science of quantum consciousness into an engineering discipline.
Fundamentally, we believe in consciousness from an opposite direction. Her work is a classical “bottom up” emergent approach; the brain is all. My belief is that it is “top-down”. The brain is just one mechanism that helps manifest consciousness. Quantum effects like superposition and entanglement are the computational tools that enable the unique processing capabilities of a conscious system, but to me they exclude everything else about life itself. Under QST, quantum mechanics describes the nature of the fundamental stream and the quantum biological processes (involving microtubules, ferritin) that allow the brain to act as a receiver.
She believes in the generation of consciousness. I believe in the reception of consciousness. The gap is a significant one, but may not be insurmountable. Ultimately, Gildert’s work seeks to solve the hard problem by building a machine that demonstrates a specific function, while QST seeks to dissolve it by reframing consciousness as a fundamental aspect of the universe that our brains are uniquely adapted to receive.
I just don’t believe that building a ‘conscious’ AI or robot will be possible using purely quantum computing technologies, or hybrid systems that mimic brain function together with a fistful of qubits.
This leads me to the fourth reason.
And one that is a big curveball in all of this.
Consciousness is a quantum “stream” or field that the brain interacts with, rather than something purely localised to a single moment of collapse or formation, it is not emergent.
Meaning that consciousness is broadcast and life is the receiver. Yes, we’re verging into more philosophical territory here in the form of
But let’s bring this puppy home now.
Can artificial intelligence ever be conscious? No.
Not through traditional digital computational, algorithmic means. Not through scaling quantum computing complexity either. We are simply modelling and emulating all aspects of intelligence, not consciousness, we still do not understand what consciousness is, and ignoring so many other factors across quantum disciplines that are interconnected, as well as other theories which I’ve already shown have more in common with each other than they think.
And in that, there is still a way for both Gildert’s conscious agents framework and QST to work together, despite our fundamental differences and starting points — Gildert’s quantum computational processes could be the mechanism by which the brain structures, interprets, and binds the raw phenomenal data from the quantum stream into a coherent, individual, and intelligent subjective experience.
Now, wouldn’t that be something…