What you’ll hear in this episode:

- The AI consciousness debate: what 100+ AI leaders told Byron—and why he disagrees.

- Brains, minds, and consciousness: power, energy, memory, and why “the brain is not a computer.”

- LLMs as the fourth great knowledge store (after DNA, brains, writing) and why that matters.

- Fear vs. progress: the 2023 “pause AI” letter, exponential curves, and our rock-or-bear instincts.

- “We Are Agora”: humanity as a superorganism and what that suggests about kindness and society.

- Byron’s next book, The Open-Minded Skeptic: first-hand, hard-to-explain experiences from science-minded people.

- Spirituality meets science: from near-death stories to quantum questions and why many realities may be compatible.

- A practical on-ramp for AI newcomers and a closing appeal to build utopia through everyday kindness.

About Love Conquers Fear:

In an era of exponentially evolving AI and robotics, one question looms: Will humanity make it? Love Conquers Fear is where leadership meets love, technology serves humanity, and vision becomes action. Host, Brett Alexander Hurt, tech entrepreneur and investor, sits down with some of the world’s most influential people to ask: Will we unite to create the Age of Abundance for All? These conversations are calls to action, awakening leaders everywhere to rise and help humanity choose the Light.

Follow Brett Alexander Hurt on Linkedin: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/bretthurt/⁠

Love Conquers Fear on Youtube: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/@LoveConquersFear2025⁠

Love Conquers Fear on Spotify: ⁠https://open.spotify.com/show/6wngdSw7FmdibLC9mu300q⁠

Love Conquers Fear on Apple: ⁠https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/love-conquers-fear/id1841734456⁠

About Byron Reese:

Byron Reese is a futurist, author, and entrepreneur who has led GigaOm and hosted its long-running podcast Voices in AI(118+ episodes). He’s written five books including Infinite Progress (2013), The Fourth Age (2018), Wasted (2020), Stories, Dice, and Rocks That Think (2022), and We Are Agora (BenBella, Dec 12, 2023), which argues humanity functions like a single superorganism. Earlier, through his company Knowingly, Reese acquired GigaOm’s assets in 2015 and helped relaunch the brand. He speaks globally on technology’s impact and is known for a data-driven, optimistic view of the future.

Timestamps:

00:00 – Preview

01:22 – Intro: Rosh Hashanah, The Lattice, and co-creating with AI

02:46 – Book rec: Why Buddhism Is True and science-rooted spirituality

05:04 – Consciousness disagreements

07:21 – PSA: Project Hail Mary (read first, skip the movie trailer)

8:54 – Introducing Byron Reese & his five books (Infinite Progress → We Are Agora)

11:47 – Byron’s origin: Gene Roddenberry line → “techno-optimist” journey

15:39 – New book: The Open-Minded Skeptic — are “supernatural” events just natural, unmeasured?

22:41 – What science can (and can’t) measure; knowing vs. proving

25:26 – Can-AI-Become-Conscious dinner recap

26:41 – Voices in AI: 107/111 say machines can be conscious

31:50 – Brains vs. exascale: 25W vs. ~25MW; why “the brain isn’t a computer”

35:05 – “Last great scientific problem”: why consciousness resists measurement

38:33 – Must we grant AI “rights”?

43:41 – Why the moratorium felt like fear: the pull-quote test

47:48 – How we moved past the GPT-4 shock; “we’re still learning what it can do”

48:55 – The 4→4→4 pattern: DNA, brains, writing, LLMs as consolidated knowledge

51:53 – Google’s 31M answers vs. LLMs’ conversational synthesis

1:07:09 – Media incentives & “happy news” vs. outrage economics

1:11:08 – The smile that saves a life: Dr. Jerome Motto & kindness as leverage

1:17:39 – Productivity tools are always net-good; new jobs we can’t yet name

1:18:30 – The 50-year half-life of jobs: full employment through shifts

1:28:56 – Data that optimism is winning

1:38:34 – Open-Minded Skeptic stories: frauds, “shut-eyes,” and credible witnesses

1:50:50 – From intellectual to experiential faith; reading rec: 11 Days in May