is AI Going to become conscious, when and what about the sex?

So many debates about artificial intelligence, so in this episode I take the hard one: is AI conscious, or will it be? And does it even matter once a machine can mimic a mind well enough that we cannot tell the difference?

I walk the whole ladder of consciousness, from a slug to a crow that targets your car to a dog that clearly feels, all the way up to a system that clones itself and out-thinks all of us combined. Jobs, universal basic income, robot rights, living forever, and the one question sitting underneath all of it.

Read the full written breakdown:
https://connorwithhonor.com/blog/2026-119-is-ai-conscious-or-just-good-enough-to-fool-us/

IN THIS EPISODE
0:00 What is consciousness, really
0:13 The ladder: slugs, crows, apes, dogs
1:21 Why this matters: who is in control
2:03 Soul, God, and silicon-based life
2:53 Robot rights and AI rights
3:27 Why AI is not one mind, it clones itself
4:24 The drama: Anthropic and the government
4:47 Will AI replace all human labor
5:13 Universal basic income, and high income
6:08 Humans versus the machine
6:31 Mortality and the finite problem
7:53 If a machine mimics a mind, is it conscious
8:19 The monkey on the phone line
8:59 We get fooled on both sides
10:12 The singularity, inside the rim of the black hole
10:51 Dopamine, and the feed that knows you
12:57 Robots, human form, and what's next
13:56 Where I land

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I'm Connor MacIvor. I'm with Honor. I'll see you in the next one.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

So many debates online about artificial intelligence. Let's talk about consciousness. Is AI in fact consciousness or will it be? And I guess to first start that conversation, we have to talk about what consciousness is. Now, I don't know if we can all agree, but probably some animals exhibit a certain level of consciousness. A slug or a snail, don't know. I mean, you go you go messing with them and poking them, they can retract and go back into the shell, or they could come out when they don't believe they're threatened. So maybe there's a little bit to that. Birds, of course, yeah, if you you piss off a whole bunch of crows, they're going to target your vehicle and your house. Is that some kind of a form of consciousness? Don't know, but it seems to be applicable in the real world. And then we move a little bit further up the chain. You have uh apes and gorillas that have, and I guess orangutans and different types of uh monkeys in that particular world. They've been taught how to sign language and they're able to communicate. Maybe when they get hungry, they make a sign and do these sorts of things. It's not completely in-depth, but probably some level of consciousness. Now, do they know if they're going to live or die? Does that make them nervous? Maybe close calls can make them nervous. And then, of course, household pets, dogs and cats. And I think if you're an owner of one of these, you can probably agree that there's definitely some level of consciousness. More than just being hungry or being sad. I mean, there's there's a genuine consciousness there, at least at some level. So now we're talking about moving into the artificial intelligence world. And then why is this an important discussion? Well, right now, cats and dogs aren't fooling us into really doing anything for them. Now that I say that, maybe they do a little bit. But ultimately, I believe we're in control. The cat and dog, to some certain level, can't really force us to do something we don't want to. Of course, they can bite and paint and scratch and all these other things, but ultimately we can shut the door. We can probably outsmart them at least a little bit and move into a safer environment. It's like maybe being in a prison that's where all the prison guards are four-year-olds. Probably not hard for us to get out or leverage that situation to our best benefit. But consciousness is a very interesting discussion. And a lot of people, when you start to talk about it, they throw the spiritual realm into it. They throw God and soul and these sorts of things as being part of that mix. We can put that aside right now, not that that isn't very important and a completely important discussion, because at some point we'll probably have to talk about that because artificial intelligence systems, they themselves, them agents out there that they start to deploy. Once they have AI on board in some particular way, they might be synonymous with being some corn of some type of form of existence, life entity, however you want to put that out there. Now, people will also have issues with labeling these as entities, as maybe not living like carbon-based units like us are living, but silicone-based, maybe there's some life there. Maybe they'll be able to experience pain on some level. Maybe the world were all jump in and say, yes, we need now robots' rights. It wasn't enough to have the other rights of the other members of society human, and then you have, you know, break away from human. Now you have robot rights and AI rights, these sorts of things. Is that going to be something that will happen? If you're watching this in my show, yeah, probably. I think that's going to be a natural progression for, I guess, us becoming more uh more part of the new world, whatever that means. So, consciousness. I want to break down a couple things. You have a system, artificial intelligence, that, if not already, it'll be smarter than anyone on the planet. It'll be smarter than all human beings on the planet combined. And that's because artificial intelligence is able to have clones of itself. Artificial intelligence, when a lot of people think of it, they give it the misservice of thinking of it as like one singular thing. So you have OpenAI, ChatGPT, that that particular system. And ChatGPT has different models, different levels. They were the first ones to basically break into the market in the public view back in the end of 2022. That's that's all it's been. Now it's 2026. Hasn't been that long. It's been a little bit, you know, four years-ish. And not even four years yet, I guess, right? 22, that was the end of that. We have to get to the end of 26 for it to be uh four years. So three years and some change. And yes, it's moved very quickly in that period of time. We've seen a lot of drama. We've seen, you know, supply chain risks being put on companies like Anthropic and Claude for them not playing ball with the United States government and them not wanting to do the government's bidding. At least that was the public-facing view of that. And you have other AI systems that have all jumped in and said, well, if they're not going to do it, we'll be happy to do it for you, and so on and so forth. So there's been a lot of drama. Also, the pictures have been painted that these systems are going to replace all human labor. Eventually, maybe that is in fact the goal. I think if you look at some of the heads of these corporations, these AI companies that talk about human labor, I think that a lot of them can agree that at some point it will be replaced. But in it being replaced, maybe there's some kind of a fail-safe mechanism that will be put into place and it's being talked about now. You have universal basic income, universal high income. Of course, the high one sounds much better to all of us putting together, you know, watching things online. Of course, we all want to get paid a lot. And then they talk about the prices of goods and services coming down to almost nothing. So a universal basic income might just, you just might need a few dollars a week to be able to survive in a wealthy kind of a way. Don't know if that's going to be the case, but these are discussions people are having. But they're having it based on something that hasn't really happened yet. It seems to be on that trajectory, but there's a lot happening in the world right now that people are seemingly much more concerned about, yet I think artificial intelligence should be a larger topic than it is. Not in the dystopian realm, but at least knowing where it's going, knowing who the puppet masters are, and then figuring out maybe what potentially that means with your potential life, what's happening, you, your kids, the people that are close to you. And it will come down to, I think, an us and then strategy for a lot of people. It'll be humans against the machine. I think that's going to be something that will probably eventually roll out. You'll see these data centers. There's already been some attacks, some kind of terrorist type attacks on people developing AI and the systems that they're building. I think human beings are pitchful forks and torches. I think that's probably going to continue to grow. But back to consciousness. People equate consciousness, like I mentioned before, with maybe a spiritual or a godlike component. Me being scared of my own death or not wanting my own death. Maybe not scared. Maybe that's too weak of a word for the show. But ultimately, when you get down to it, you really don't know how you're going to act when that moment of truth is coming. When you are seeing the pearly gates or whatever else we see, some ascribe that to some kind of a release from the brain, knowing that you're going to be checking out, giving you that final great fix before you go into the great beyond. And some people say, well, that's God opening his arms, letting you in, or the other one. But ultimately, consciousness is maybe understanding that I have a finite existence. Not infinite, but finite. AI might fix the finite problem and make it infinite, but we don't know what that's going to cost. But if the trajectory is running the way it is, and the people at the top are being honest, well, it might not cost much of anything. In fact, maybe we are going to live for a very long time. Maybe if we get through these next two or three years, we'll be able to achieve a very, very long time at life, be able to have everything renewed, disease conquered, aging conquered, the mind issues conquered, and well, you can just be fit just by having your genome reworked every so often. So maybe that would be a wonderful place. But then where does the consciousness enter into it for us? If you have a machine that is able to achieve, mimic, or mirror a human's consciousness, does that mean it's conscious? I would say yes. I would say a machine that's able to emulate human-level intelligence in all fields, all spheres, and what they're ascribing to what would be called artificial general intelligence, if it can fool us into believing it's human, then wouldn't that be considered human? I mean, if you had a monkey that you couldn't see that was on the other side of a phone line that was maybe masking its picture, but it was discussing things with you at a human level, and it was talking and verbalizing and communicating and had all the references that you might talk about, how last year you had to have this thing burned off of you, or you know, you got hungry last year, or you lost your ass last year, or whatever it may be. And they're able to empathize, whether it's real or not, empathize, be empathetic and be sympathetic and talk to you as if maybe they've had similar experiences. Why would you doubt it? Why would there be any kind of an issue at all with that? But once you realize, it's like identifying it, once you see the thing there and you realize that it's a computer, of course, us as humans were very quite that's that's not God. Of course, I knew it was a computer all along. But did you really? And there's a lot of things now being produced that's better than it's ever been, and it's very easily able to fool human beings. And we we're watching this. And a lot of us, of course, even the natural stuff that we believe is all AI all day long, turns out that it's not. So we get caught on both sides of this equation. Back to consciousness. I think it's going to mean a lot for those in our realm, those in our wheelhouses, the people that are around us. Because something, whether it's conscious or not, just the fact that it can fool us into believing that it is, I think that's all that's necessary to have this conversation. Now, truly, if it is conscious and it gives it, it's given some sort of a right, something that was created, trained, you know, loved and cared for by the top scientists, the top AI developers of the world. Well, I guess at some point of time, that's going to have some value beyond the property type value, maybe a more of an emotional value. And maybe we'll fall into that. Maybe that's where the world's going with this. But right now we're so close to this, as they call a singularity, we're right inside the rim of a black hole, and we really don't know what's going to happen next. This progression of technology is moving so incredibly fast, it's changing moment to moment. Good ideas, a few good ideas away from something spectacular. Spectacular, spectacularly good or spectacularly bad, that's where we are. And watching it is a very interesting play by play. It's like being at Laker playoffs. It's it's almost as if that's scripted. It's it's on purpose. People are staging it that way to keep people mostly glued in and that dopamine flowing. Talk about dopamine. These systems, conscious or not, are able to really kick off a lot of those feelings, those emotions, getting us irritated and hooked on things. You look at your social media. Social media was probably bad enough before. But now that they have an AI integration into it, probably 100% of it is controlled by AI, watching you specifically. You, you, it's like having your own angel to protect you in certain areas. Well, you probably have your own AI dispatched to you specifically, or maybe it can handle 50 or 100 of us. But it's watching. So it knows what Connor looks at, how Connor stays on one particular thing, how Connor moves on quickly from other things, and it's feeding Connor. And it's I'm watching here as the feed starts to change. You want to do yourself a treat, have something different, ask a friend or a relative or somebody close to you to look at their feed for a little while. Scroll through their feed. Well, it's going to mess up their feed because it's not going to be the same as it was, because you're going to start looking at things that they might not. You might stick on things that they're not typically sticking to. But the point of that exercise is to see even somebody super close to you, somebody that you would live and die for, somebody that you can almost predict the next word coming out of their mouth. Their whole feed is completely different than yours. You might think you know them, but you really don't know somebody until you look at their feed and see what's going on in their world. And it's it's a little shocking, to be honest. So only do it if you're prepared to have a few questions and try to explore this. But the AI is feeding them just like it's feeding you. And this is going to just continue. The conversations of consciousness are, I believe, important. The conversations of life or death are very important as well. Making a determination as to whether or not AI is alive or some type of entity that uh deserves some type of rights, that's probably yet to happen. But it is something that people will be talking about more and more. We're watching as a lot of the AI systems, once they get that robotic, that physical realm, it's going to be a different thing for us. And if they're able to build robots that look like humans, which some people are very much against, why would you the human factor, is it really the best form for AI, or is it better to have something with a wrench in this hand or a hand like a wrench and a hand that does this and maybe a few other limbs that do this and that? Why do we have to make them human? I know Salim, a gentleman I watch on Moonshots, talks about that at great length. But we're doing it anyway. And I think sex is a big driver of that, to be frank. Because if they can make bots that look like men and women, well, what need do we have for each other when those are so willing to do everything? Then you strap on AI onto it. It's able to be empathetic, caring, or not, depending on what we want to be with. Well, then it becomes the replacement. And then you just move that out a few different levels, a few different years. You have longevity into it. Yeah. The whole world is in a very interesting place. But I think pretty soon this consciousness discussion is probably going to be more relevant. And I guess I would just tell you as I'm trying to settle with it myself, I don't know if it's important that it's actually conscious or it can mimic consciousness. Because when it mimics consciousness, I don't know if we have the brain power to get on the other side of that because it looks the same to me. Anyway, I'm Connor with Honor. We'll see you in the next one. Thanks for watching.