#100 Meet The Scientist Who Wrote the Blueprint for Conscious Machines

Dr. Michael Timothy Bennett is an award-winning AI researcher at the Australian National University and author of "How to Build Conscious Machines" — a mathematical blueprint for why anything is conscious and what it would take to engineer a machine that truly experiences the world.Expect to learn why information processing feels like anything at all, how consciousness is built from a hierarchy of selves, why a fly has experience but a slime mold does not, why current AI is fundamentally incapable of consciousness, how cancer is an alignment problem between cells, what building a conscious machine actually requires, and much more…Timestamps:00:00 Why Does Information Processing Feel Like Anything?01:05 The Cosmic Ord: How the Universe Deletes What Doesn't Work03:59 Where is the Line Between Non-Conscious and Conscious?05:53 Multi-Scale Competency: Cells, Organs, Organisms, Ecosystems07:43 The First Order Self: Phenomenal Consciousness Explained08:27 Access Consciousness: Predicting Your Prediction of Me13:04 When Do Enough Abstraction Layers Produce Experience?18:40 Liquid Brains vs Solid Brains: Ant Colonies and Human Networks21:03 Bioelectricity: How Cells Signal and Cooperate24:03 Human-AI Hybrids: Prosthetic, Cooperative and Integrated30:30 Is There a Bottom to the Abstraction Stack?37:07 Why a Single Thread CPU Will Never Feel Anything40:56 Feeling Pain vs Knowing You Feel Pain42:52 Do Dogs Model Your Mind?46:58 The Paper He Wrote as a Joke That Won Best Student Prize48:11 Cancer as a Breakdown in Cellular Cooperation53:22 Why Elephants Don't Get Cancer and What That Means for AI56:47 How Do You Actually Build a Conscious Machine?01:01:36 Does a Tesla Robot Have Grounding?01:04:17 Should We Build Conscious Machines?01:06:46 If You Design a Robot to Love Cleaning Your Toilet01:08:25 His Biggest Fears About the Future of AI01:13:09 The Rise of Anti-Natalism and Losing Hope01:14:34 The Library of Babel: Why Modern Life Feels Overwhelming...Email for sponsorship enquiries: [email protected] ❤️ Subscribe to our main channel - https://www.youtube.com/@thegiantsshoulder?sub_confirmation=1💚 Follow on Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5m3Gta5MtIYdk59pb2GJ7M?si=Ka2rAQv7TyqiC9wvGwERpA💜 Follow on Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/the-giants-shoulder/id1752486249Download my FREE EBook 26 Neuroscience Books for 2026 HERE: https://thegiantsshoulder.com/