Consciousness in the Quantum Realm

**Suzanne Gildert** (0:01)
I actually have a fun analogy for LLMs that I was just thinking about last night. You might like this. So imagine that consciousness is something that comes first, and then it generates more and more and more training data for whatever large model you want. And I think this is actually what happened from evolutionary perspective. So organisms started with a few neurons, and then they evolve like a tiny brain stem, and then they evolve like more brain regions and more brain regions, and then eventually mammals and us evolve this massive cortex. So we've been building this giant cortex, which gives us like weirdly sized head compared to other animals. And what I think is happening is we're just basically building like a bigger and bigger and bigger LLM style thing inside our head.
And that's what evolution has done. And we're doing the same thing now with LLMs. We're just building this like massive neocortex. But everyone thinks the neocortex is the seat of consciousness. And what if it's not? What if it's that like really deep thing that started off in individual cells, that's been throwing off training data, throwing off training data for millions or billions of years, and it's grown this giant model.

**Ashlee Vance** (1:25)
All right, team, we're going to get a little weird today. We are talking to Suzanne Gildert. She's a quantum physicist who I've known for a long time, and has a new startup called Nirvanic Consciousness Technologies, which is an impressive name and an impressive field of research. Basically, we're going to get into consciousness today, obviously, and the limits of LLM technology, current AI technology, whether we're on a dead end, and the really interesting stuff is off on some other path that Suzanne is chasing. So I think you'll be, it takes a little minute to get into this, but then I think you'll be entertained and your mind will be racing as we dive in now to explore consciousness in the quantum realm.
Hello, Suzanne, how are you?

**Suzanne Gildert** (2:24)
Hi, Ashlee. I am very good. Thank you. Loving the new brand.

**Ashlee Vance** (2:28)
Thank you. We try. I saw you. You have a sub stack as well.

**Suzanne Gildert** (2:32)
I know. Actually, well, it's funny because I went on your YouTube channel and I saw your banner thing, and it's got the core memories with the actual wires going through them. It's like some computer history geek must have designed that.

**Ashlee Vance** (2:46)
Well, it was me. I mean, I didn't do the design, but I was like, we got to have these bits and pieces in there. Yeah, we're trying to.

**Suzanne Gildert** (2:53)
That's so cool.

**Ashlee Vance** (2:54)
It was a hard mandate because I was like, I want it retro to acknowledge the actual core memory, but then futuristic for the stuff we cover. That's cool. Yeah, I was happy with that. I'm so happy to know somebody who actually knows what core memory is. Where are we catching you?

**Suzanne Gildert** (3:13)
Well, I'm in Vancouver at the moment. So yeah, in my home office.

**Ashlee Vance** (3:17)
Okay. All right. I see we've got some of your robots behind you. Yeah.

**Suzanne Gildert** (3:22)
I thought these might actually be a bit of a throwback because some of these robots you've seen before and they come back over and over again.

**Ashlee Vance** (3:30)
Yes. Yeah. Well, I'm glad because we're going to be talking robots. Well, there's all kinds of places I want to go to chatting with you, but I thought there's probably a vague unifying theme in some of this, which is as long as I have known you, you have been pursuing this idea of where is AI heading, where is robotics heading, and please obviously correct me if I'm speaking out of turn, but I feel like you have been very open minded to this idea of what do these new forms of intelligence and machines look like in terms of consciousness, in terms of some of these more philosophical thoughts like these are beings that are coming into this world and do they have rights and how do we interact with them? I know you've been, I don't think your view on this particular part has changed. I mean, you've always been pretty pro embracing these new life forms and living with them. Is that fair?

**Suzanne Gildert** (4:37)
I think so, yeah. I mean, I've always been interested in trying to understand what the human mind is and how it works and as an engineer, I've always tried to understand something by building it. So the idea of understanding the human mind is like, can we build something equivalent in a machine, in a robot and get all those pieces put together in the right way, but it comes together as a mind. So it's really a fascination with the mind, I think.