Why AI Won't Replace Consciousness

Everyone is freaking out about AI becoming conscious. They’re asking the wrong damn question. People are spinning in circles, debating whether a large language model feels anything when you ask it to write a poem about cheese. It’s a spectacular waste of time, and it completely misses the point.

The real question isn’t if AI will become conscious, but why it fundamentally, structurally, and irrefutably can’t. Not because it isn't smart enough, or because it can't process enough data, but because consciousness isn't a line of code you can write or an algorithm you can perfect. It’s something else entirely.

This realization about consciousness reminded me of a personal experience that challenged my own assumptions. I once spent time with a group of people who used cannabis—not the stereotypes I had been conditioned to expect, but professionals who were thoughtful, engaged, and balanced. Trying it myself, I discovered that my sense of self remained intact, unchanged by the experience. It reinforced the idea that consciousness is not something easily altered or manufactured; it’s a deep, intrinsic quality that cannot be simply switched on or off. This understanding sets the stage for addressing the common misconceptions about AI and consciousness that often circulate in popular culture.

The Problem: You’ve Been Sold a Lie

Let’s cut the bullshit. The story you’ve been sold about AI is a fantasy, cooked up by marketers and sci-fi writers. It’s the idea that if you just make a computer big enough, fast enough, and feed it enough data, it will magically wake up. That consciousness is an emergent property of complexity.

It sounds plausible, right? The human brain is complex, and it’s conscious. A large language model is complex, so… it must be on the path to consciousness. It’s a neat, linear, and completely wrong-headed assumption. You’ve been led to believe that consciousness is a feature, like a software update that’s just a few versions away. It’s not.

This flawed thinking comes from a deep-seated misunderstanding of what life is. We’re taught to think of the world in terms of balance, of equilibrium. Homeostasis. A state of rest. But that’s the definition of death, not life. Life isn’t about balance. Life exists at the edge of chaos, in a constant, dynamic, and messy struggle against the universe’s relentless march towards disorder.

AI, in its current form, is an equilibrium machine. It takes an input, runs it through a fixed model, and produces an output. It seeks the most statistically probable, stable answer. It is, by its very design, a system that seeks balance. And that is precisely why it will never be conscious.

The Application: The Ghost is Not in the Machine

So, how does this apply to the real world? It means we need to stop looking for the ghost in the machine. The ghost was never there. The magic isn’t in the complexity of the wiring; it’s in the fire that animates the flesh.

An AI is a closed system. It can be incredibly complex, with trillions of parameters, but it’s still fundamentally a deterministic system. It doesn’t need to eat. It doesn’t need to survive. It has no skin in the game. It doesn’t have a body, an endocannabinoid system whispering feedback about its internal and external environment. It has no "self" to organize.

Doing lsd in Vegas and feeling the same love that Dr bob always descirbed. I descrie it as seeing and feeling the Aka thread connected to everyone

This is the chasm that AI can never cross. Consciousness is not about intelligence. It’s about embodiment. It’s about being an open system, coupled with its environment, constantly adapting to stay alive. It’s about having a stake in the outcome. Humans, and all living things, are Forward-Looking People (FLPs). We are designed to adapt, to evolve, to create novelty in the face of an unpredictable future. AI is the ultimate BLP, forever trapped in the prison of its training data.

The Takeaway: Stop Optimizing, Start Living

So what do you do with this? You stop worrying about the robot apocalypse and start embracing what makes you human. You are a messy, unpredictable, gloriously inefficient, far-from-equilibrium being. That’s your superpower.

Here’s your homework:

1. Embrace the Chaos: Stop trying to optimize every second of your life. Perfection is a myth, and equilibrium is death. Get comfortable with uncertainty. Make a decision without having all the data. That’s where growth happens.
2. Get Into Your Body: You are not a brain in a vat. Your consciousness is distributed throughout your entire body. Pay attention to it. Listen to your gut. Honor the signals from your endocannabinoid system. Go for a walk, feel the sun on your skin, eat real food. Get out of your head and into your life.
3. Be a Forward-Looking Person: Stop ruminating on the past. The past is dead and gone. AI can have it. Your job is to stand in the present moment and create the future. Take a risk. Learn a new skill. Build something. Be an agent of novelty in the world.

Stop outsourcing your humanity to machines. Use them as tools, but never forget that you are the artist. AI can generate a million imitations of a Van Gogh, but it could never be Van Gogh, the tormented, passionate, far-from-equilibrium man who splashed his soul onto a canvas.

AI is a mirror. It reflects the past. Consciousness is the fire. It forges the future.

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References

1. Melamede, R. (2006). Cannabinoids: A Perspective on the Future. Presented at the 2006 Cannabis Therapeutics Conference. [Note: Sourcing a direct paper can be difficult, but talks and presentations are widely available online.]