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I am talking with neuroscientist Christof Koch, and as he says, "How is it that we, a piece of furniture of the universe like a rock or a star or a tree, can love or hate or see or hear?" What, in other words, makes us conscious, and what does that mean? He is known for his work exploring the substrate of consciousness in humans, animals, and machines and is the author of more than 350 peer-reviewed publications and five books, the latest of which is Then I Am Myself the World: What Consciousness Is and How to Expand It. A physicist and neurobiologist, he was for more than a quarter of a century a professor of biology and engineering at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. In 2011, he became the Chief Scientist at the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle and in 2015, its president; now a Meritorious Investigator. He is also the Chief Scientist of the Tiny Blue Dot Foundation in Santa Monica, seeking to understand consciousness, its place in nature, and how this knowledge can benefit all of humanity.

In part 2, we talk about a theory of consciousness that Christof is a primary researcher of: Integrated Information Theory, and tools for detecting and measuring consciousness, the magic number φ, the possibility of consciousness transfer, philosophical zombies, and neural correlates of consciousness.

All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines.

Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.