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#152 Why AI Will Never Be Conscious

April 20, 2026 · 1 h 42 min

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Anil Seth is a British neuroscientist and professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience at the University of Sussex. A proponent of materialist explanations of consciousness, he is currently amongst the most cited scholars on the topics of neuroscience and cognitive science globally. Read Anil's essay, ⁠"The Mythology of Conscious AI"⁠.


TIMESTAMPS

(00:00) The Difference Between Intelligence and Consciousness

(03:55) What’s Stopping the Replication of Consciousness in AI?

(17:01) Can You Separate What the Brain Is From What It Does?

(22:20) Is Conscious Experience Just Predictions From the Brain?

(26:48) Why Do We Project Consciousness Onto LLMs?

(37:27) Can Consciousness Exist Without a Body?

(42:25) Why We Liken the Brain to a Computer

(52:11) Is There An Evolutionary Reason For Consciousness?

(56:29) Studying Unconscious Perception?

(1:01:21) Is Consciousness Unified? Split-Brain Patients

(1:15:10) Attention and Consciousness

(1:19:04) What Would a Conscious Chatbot Even Look Like?

(1:25:13) Consciousness as a Controlled Hallucination

(1:34:19) Do Scientists Actually Study “Consciousness” At All?


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