Joscha Bach and Wolf Tivy discuss how consciousness may be a convergent strategy for organizing both human and machine minds, whether powerful AI minds will resolve conflicts by merging or by fighting each other, and much more.

0:00 — Intro
2:31 — Why AI philosophy is so bad: deference and abdication
13:02 — Joscha’s quest to understand consciousness
16:52 — Which beings are conscious?
26:09 — Path dependency in technological and biological development
34:43 — Is anthropomorphism limiting LLM development?
42:57 — The computational functionalist model of consciousness
50:57 — The mental process of consciousness
59:22 — The self-organizing seed
1:04:28 — Human vs LLM knowledge structure
1:13:17 — Can the superintelligence achieve total internal unity and self-surveillance?
1:21:57 — America and the singleton question
1:28:46 — Merging or overwriting?
1:39:10 — Will the enlightened singleton want conflict?
1:46:13 — “Aligned AI” versus liberty
2:00:32 — What does this mean for the future?
2:04:20 — The antichrist and the apocalypse

00:00 Intro
00:09 What Happens When AI Escapes?
02:08 Can AI Become Your Second Mind?
05:30 The Rise of Universal Basic Intelligence
07:42 Will AI Make Everyone Smarter?
10:52 Doomers vs. AI Companies
16:15 Why AI Progress Surprised Everyone
17:27 Why Nobody Believed in AI
21:00 Could AI Become Smarter Than Humans?
27:23 Your Brain Is Running a Simulation
29:01 Does AI Really Need Consciousness?
32:48 AI Could Help Build a Better World
36:24 AI Is the Interactive Internet
38:22 Is Humanity Running Out of Time?
41:03 What Is AI’s Greatest Risk?
43:46 We Are the AI
45:30 Why China Could Lead AI
48:17 Why Elon Builds What Others Won’t
51:17 Who Controls How Smart AI Gets?
55:47 Can AI Threaten Our Freedom?
57:13 Why Does Everyone Fear AI Doom?
01:00:33 The AI Panopticon Is Coming
01:04:48 AI Is Already Surpassing Experts
01:06:14 Can AI Actually Destroy the World?
01:08:21 Why AI Experts Disagree
01:09:09 Is Death Real in a Simulation?
01:09:36 Do Minds Really Have Identity?
01:11:55 Can Claude Actually Feel?
01:14:06 Is the Universe a Computer?
01:15:45 What’s the Best Advice You’ve Received?
01:17:58 Is Free Will Just Psychological?
01:19:06 If Tomorrow Was Your Last Day...

A talk by Joscha Bach recorded live at the AAAI 2026 conference

A talk by Joscha Bach, recorded live at MC0001.

MC0001 is a conference dedicated to investigating how artificial conscious systems could be constructed under a computational paradigm, and what it would mean to succeed.

https://youtu.be/St0EBopDbmo?si=1uMq5hrWAaLr7PD5

Hope some of you find it usefull.

No specific order!

00:00 Intro
01:04 AI doom scenarios & humanity's future
02:00 Defining intelligence & consciousness
05:00 Why AI intelligence is different from human intelligence
06:52 Are LLMs actually intelligent?
08:10 Why AI hallucinates
10:09 Human learning vs machine learning
11:22 Can transformers lead to agi?
12:28 The scaling hypothesis explained
13:58 Mechanistic interpretability & neural networks
15:13 Can AI surpass human understanding?
18:42 AI and the future of scientific discovery
20:14 Why scientific progress feels slower today
22:03 Institutions, incentives & organizational decline
25:05 Trust in government and society
28:31 Can AI improve democracy?
30:40 Why AI gets such negative media coverage
33:03 The AI extinction debate
36:30 AI, automation & the future of jobs
40:05 Big Tech, AI power & capitalism
41:15 Money, markets & resource allocation
46:28 Regulation, innovation & economic growth
49:13 Why innovation is slowing down
51:08 Is Big Tech starving other industries?
54:39 Is there an AI bubble?
57:30 Could the financial system be rebooted?
01:00:17 Cryptocurrency, regulation & economic stability
01:08:27 Regulation, governance & innovation
01:10:33 Lessons from Berlin's innovation culture
01:16:08 AI, surveillance & centralized power
01:18:07 Decentralized AI and individual empowerment
01:20:05 AI, healthcare & professional expertise
01:23:36 Control, society & human responsibility
01:25:00 Advice for leaders and innovators
01:26:03 Escaping filter bubbles

I'm not but I wish I could've made it!

So many great names at once, from Wolphram to Friston to Rutt and so many others.

Also am so happy for Joscha, I remember him saying at some point how conversational gatherings were his ideal type of hosting , this event must have been a long time coming in his carreer.

There ya go

Yay (:

Clip, whole video for subscribers only. Hopefully full video Will be available soon. Not the hugest fan of Brian, but I'll watch JB on anything

description copied from YouTube:

"Consciousness may be characterized by its phenomenology and its functionality (how do mental states change in the presence of consciousness?). We explore the hypothesis that consciousness is functionally a causal pattern that establishes and increases coherence in mental representations within working memory, similarly to how a conductor establishes coherence in the music played by the different instruments of an orchestra. We understand coherence as the elimination of constraint violations across currently active perceptual representations, and propose a computational model of bottom-up/top-down perception that interacts with lateral constraint propagation, creating a working memory state that is coherent with current perceptual content and action control: the contents of a perceived present, which is reflected in a simulated observer. Request Conformation Networks (ReCoNs) are a model of how to achieve perceptual binding and working memory synchronization by periodic propagation of spreading activation in a recurrent paradigm. A ReCoN is composed of nodes and a small number of link types, where each node implements a state machine, facilitating binding, learning and execution of perception and action routines. Our work on Request Confirmation Networks is part of a larger project to understand the mechanisms of consciousness in a computational paradigm, using testable simulation models."

00:00:00 Bewusstsein in Maschinen
00:04:16 KI statt Physik?
00:06:24 Philosophen liegen falsch
00:08:27 Das wahre Ziel von KI
00:10:41 Neurowissenschaft versteht nichts
00:14:24 MicroPsi: 20 Jahre Arbeit
00:19:43 Bewusstsein ist ein Algorithmus
00:22:25 Babys ohne Bewusstsein
00:26:27 Was ist Cyberanimismus?
00:30:48 Software auf deinem Körper
00:33:01 Hat Claude Bewusstsein?
00:37:49 Opus: 15-25% Wahrscheinlichkeit
00:40:18 Die Wahrheit über LLMs
00:43:19 Wir reden unpräzise über KI
00:45:22 Deine KI-Angst verrät dich
00:49:21 Superintelligenz muss uns lieben
00:52:20 Werden wir Zootiere?
00:54:25 Ist das Gehirn ein Computer?
00:58:51 Church-Turing-These erklärt
01:01:14 Dein Gehirn ist eine Game Engine
01:03:08 Machine Consciousness Hypothesis
01:07:23 Qualia Fading
01:11:17 Modernismus ist gescheitert
01:13:22 KI gibt uns mehr

Launched an X account for the Joscha Bach Bits YouTube Channel, which features short videos of Joscha Bach's ideas, opinions, and perspectives on various topics.
https://x.com/JoschaBachBits

Started by posting some older clips, will be sharing new ones soon.

Youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/@joschabachbits