A bold theory has seized the scientific community. Despite being tragically incorrect — and receiving over a decade of considerate evaluation — it won’t go away. While IIT badly misses its target, it leaves us with lessons that are vital to moving the discussion of consciousness forward. Called Integrated Information…

Living with Frankenstein: The History and Destiny of Machine Consciousness Print and ebook available on Amazon Read Why I Wrote Living With Frankenstein Things Without Being In the beginning, there were beings and things. The most important beings were human beings, but we were not alone. Fellow animals walked the earth. We gathered…

Living with Frankenstein: The History and Destiny of Machine Consciousness Print and ebook available on Amazon Read excerpt Have you ever wondered how machines will take over the world? We all seem to believe this development is inevitable, but details are hard to find. Clarity arrived when I challenged myself…

When Pokémon GO launched, millions of gamers were offered a chance to play in a visually enhanced version of Planet Earth. While the game is still heavily map-based, experiential immersion has fallen by the wayside. But that may change soon. Niantic is starting to play a new game with Pokémon…

What COVID-19 teaches us about the existential threat of artificial intelligence. COVID-19, carbon-induced climate change, and nuclear winter carry existential risk, not due to their intelligence, but because they destroy large systems upon which we depend. Our first existential digital threat is widely expected to be an artificial general intelligence…

Everything I really know about conspiracy theory I learned from Victor¹. We were not only friends, but business partners. Over a period of months, work took us almost daily from Los Angeles to Orange County and back. You can imagine the traffic. Victor was like me in many ways but…

Proof of Machine Consciousness pt. 8 In this series, I prove machines are conscious by exploring various aspects of consciousness, showing how machines possess each one. If you feel I’ve omitted an important aspect of consciousness, I am open to any challenge. For further background on my project, click here. …

A tech cleanse may be better for your spirit than any juice fast. Take out your SIM card for 5 days and you’ll see what I mean. Life without a phone is a fundamentally different way of being. My phone bricked itself a week ago. Just died. Some kind of…

Why are the iOS 7 icons like local produce? The answer is a limiting factor for human progress. Rustic, heirloom, organic, eco. Are these marketing buzzwords or real human values? Today, both. As society fetishizes mechanical keyboards, craft microbrews, and all things local, I ponder the essence of taste. My…