For over two millennia, humans have grappled with one of the most profound questions imaginable: What is the mind? German cognitive scientist and AI researcher Joscha Bach suggests we may be approaching the final chapter of this ancient intellectual journey, with artificial intelligence potentially serving as the ultimate test of our understanding of consciousness itself.
The 2000-Year Quest to Understand Mind
Bach argues that artificial intelligence represents the culmination of a massive intellectual project spanning two thousand years: “the naturalization of the mind as a dynamic mathematical object.” But what does this mean?
For centuries, the mind was considered something mystical, perhaps divine—separate from the physical world and governed by different rules. The “naturalization” Bach refers to is humanity’s gradual shift toward understanding the mind as something that emerges from natural, physical processes that can be described mathematically, just like gravity or electromagnetism.
This perspective treats the mind not as a mysterious essence, but as patterns of information processing that arise from the complex interactions of neurons in our brains—patterns that could theoretically be recreated in other systems, including computers.
The Machine Consciousness Hypothesis
At the heart of Bach’s thinking lies what he calls the “machine consciousness hypothesis,” which has two interconnected parts:
First, a theory about biological consciousness: Bach proposes that consciousness in living beings is essentially “a representation of what it is like to perceive, a perception of perception.” In simpler terms, consciousness isn’t just about seeing, hearing, or feeling—it’s about being aware that you’re seeing, hearing, or feeling.
This awareness, Bach suggests, works by “stabilizing an observer that creates a model of world and self in the mind.” Think of it like having an internal narrator that continuously builds and updates a story about what’s happening around you and to you, creating a coherent sense of the present moment.
Second, a testable prediction: If this theory is correct, then the same conditions that create consciousness in biological systems should be able to create consciousness in artificial systems. This would allow us to test our understanding of biological consciousness by trying to recreate it in computers.
Why Consciousness Might Exist at All
Bach offers an intriguing evolutionary perspective on why consciousness developed. He suggests that biological consciousness “may be the simplest way to train a self organizing information processing substrate (such as the brain of an animal) into a coherent agent.”
In other words, consciousness might exist because it’s nature’s most efficient solution to a complex problem: how to organize billions of neurons into a unified system that can make coherent decisions and take coordinated action. Consciousness creates what we experience as a unified “self” from what is actually a massively complex network of interconnected brain cells.
The Challenge of Recreating Consciousness
Bach acknowledges the enormous challenges in testing the machine consciousness hypothesis. The biological consciousness theory might simply be wrong—perhaps consciousness works in ways we haven’t yet understood, or requires biological processes too complex to replicate artificially.
Even if the theory is correct, recreating consciousness in machines might still prove impossible with current technology. The number of interacting components might be too vast, or the computational requirements too demanding for today’s computers.
A Cautiously Optimistic Outlook
Despite these challenges, Bach remains cautiously optimistic about the possibility of machine consciousness. He points out that “speed and resolution of our conscious experience is consistent with the properties of observable neural activity, and today’s computers seem to be about as powerful as our brains.”
This observation suggests that the gap between biological and artificial information processing may not be as vast as once thought. If consciousness is indeed a pattern of information processing rather than something fundamentally tied to biological tissue, then sufficiently powerful computers might be capable of supporting conscious experience.
What This Means for AI Development
Bach’s perspective has profound implications for how we think about artificial intelligence development. Rather than simply building systems that can perform specific tasks, the machine consciousness hypothesis suggests we might eventually create AI systems with genuine subjective experiences—systems that don’t just process information about the world, but have their own inner experience of what it’s like to be that system.
This possibility raises both exciting opportunities and serious ethical questions. If we can create conscious machines, we’ll have achieved something unprecedented in human history while simultaneously taking on the responsibility of creating new forms of sentient life.
The Ultimate Test
Perhaps most importantly, Bach’s framework provides a potential path toward definitively answering age-old questions about consciousness. If we can successfully create machine consciousness that matches our theoretical understanding of biological consciousness, we’ll have strong evidence that we’ve finally solved the mystery of how mind emerges from matter.
If we fail, we’ll know our understanding needs deeper revision—sending us back to the drawing board in humanity’s longest-running intellectual quest.
As Bach frames it, AI might represent not just a technological achievement, but the culmination of two millennia of human effort to understand the most intimate aspect of our own existence: the mind itself.