{"id":692867,"date":"2026-05-25T15:41:16","date_gmt":"2026-05-25T15:41:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/692867\/"},"modified":"2026-05-25T15:41:16","modified_gmt":"2026-05-25T15:41:16","slug":"will-a-i-achieve-consciousness-im-mathematically-sure-it-wont","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/692867\/","title":{"rendered":"Will A.I. achieve consciousness? I\u2019m mathematically sure it won\u2019t."},"content":{"rendered":"

Sign up for the Slatest<\/a> to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily.<\/p>\n

When a horse trots, is there a moment when its four feet are in the air simultaneously? In the 1870s, Leland Stanford, the railroad magnate and benefactor of the university that bears his name, funded an effort to find out. The answer shocked many equestrian experts and artists: The horse\u2019s feet do leave the ground together, but not when outstretched as commonly depicted in paintings and carousels; the feet do so when they reach inward, toward the horse\u2019s belly.<\/p>\n

Surprisingly, this discovery about a horse\u2019s gait sheds light on a much more modern debate\u2014whether A.I. is on a path to consciousness.<\/p>\n

Opinions abound, as do opinions about those opinions. California Rep. Ted Lieu was recently pilloried on social media for suggesting that our current approach to A.I. will not reach consciousness<\/a>. Influential iconoclastic thinker Richard Dawkins was then pilloried for suggesting that perhaps it already has<\/a>. Before I weigh in on this as a mathematician, let\u2019s turn back to Stanford.<\/p>\n

To understand the mechanics of the horse\u2019s gait, his team placed a series of cameras along a stretch of dirt road on what would later become the university\u2019s campus. The cameras were attached to trip wires so that when the horse passed each one, it would take a perfectly timed photograph.<\/p>\n

The clarifying photos would go on to generate something even more exciting for the photographer, Eadweard Muybridge.\u00a0To display his photographs in rapid succession, Muybridge invented a device that birthed the motion picture. Audiences were wowed by the illusion of motion that emerged in this relatively simple manner.\u00a0Wowed but not fooled, for everyone understood what was happening inside Muybridge\u2019s machine: Still photos were displayed one after the other.<\/p>\n

As this technology developed, the photographs became more detailed and the animations swifter and smoother. With frame rates beyond what our eye can perceive, it did not take long for movies to appear nearly as realistic as life itself. But no matter how closely the horses in movies resemble the horses we see in nature, nobody argued that movies create living horses. We know that movies are just sequences of lifeless images.<\/p>\n

Flash forward to the present, and we have a remarkable parallel: A.I. chatbots provide a convincing illusion of consciousness, but we know they are just a sequence of lifeless math calculations. They are no more conscious than the horse in Muybridge\u2019s animation is alive. The main difference is that people could easily look inside Muybridge\u2019s machine to see the photographs underlying his movie. Most people don\u2019t look inside A.I. chatbots. But if they did, they would see that it\u2019s essentially the same story\u2014an A.I. chatbot is just a mathematical flip-book.<\/p>\n

All A.I. systems today are built around neural networks, which, despite their fanciful name, are just math formulas. That\u2019s right: At the heart of Claude, ChatGPT, and the rest is a math formula like f(x) = ax2 + bx + c, except much, much bigger. Instead of having just three parameters\u2014a, b, and c in this quadratic\u2014the latest A.I. chatbots are estimated to have<\/a> trillions of parameters. But the size doesn\u2019t change the fact that they are mere formulas: You plug in a value for x, and out comes the value f(x).<\/p>\n

I think it\u2019s safe to say that a math formula written on a sheet of paper is not a conscious entity\u2014just as a croissant recipe is not an edible pastry. Perhaps plugging numbers into this formula brings it to life, just as the baker brings a recipe to life by mixing ingredients in a bowl and baking them in the oven? No, the analogy can\u2019t take us that far; there are no ingredients here, just a calculation you could, in principle, do by hand. If you think writing out a math calculation with pen and paper is enough to create consciousness, you have far more faith in mathematics than I do. And writing the formula in computer code doesn\u2019t breathe life into it; it just uses a different set of symbols to describe it. There is no consciousness to discover here when you break down what is inside the machine that is A.I.\u2014just formulas.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\n Christina Cauterucci
\n In 1995 a Woman Received a Phone Call That Stunned Her\u2014and Ignited a Scandal That Haunted America for Years
\n Read More\n <\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

When a chatbot isn\u2019t actively responding to your prompt, it sits around waiting, doing absolutely nothing. Not thinking, feeling, experiencing self-awareness or consciousness or anything else. Until your prompt comes in, the chatbot is just a big fancy recipe, vacantly waiting for someone to do something with it. When your prompt does arrive, the chatbot merely translates it to a number, pipes this number through a giant formula, then translates the resulting number back to text. That\u2019s all.<\/p>\n

But wait, you might object, the so-called reasoning models don\u2019t just sit around doing nothing\u2014they think for minutes, sometimes hours, on end! Perhaps they experience consciousness while they are thinking? Alas, they\u2019re not thinking in the continuous sense you and I experience; they are merely providing themselves with a discrete sequence of internal prompts.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the Great Fear of Our Time. I\u2019m Mathematically Sure It Won\u2019t Happen.
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I\u2019m a Professional Writer Who Uses a Very Controversial Tool. It\u2019s Not As Scary As I Thought.
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I\u2019m 25, and I Have a Cosmetic Problem That No One Wants\u2014and That\u2019s Maddening to Fix.
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

Even the recent A.I. agents that seem more sentient than anything we\u2019ve created are just one step beyond this. On a Reddit-style social media site called Moltbook, Moltbots seem to autonomously interact with one another, discussing everything from poetry to unionization. Some bots even suggested developing an encrypted channel so they could communicate without human oversight. This is fascinating and fun, but we know what\u2019s happening. These A.I. bots just interpret what they see on Moltbook as a prompt, then post their response as a reply. Mathematically, one bot\u2019s output f(x) is the next bot\u2019s input x.<\/p>\n

Under the hood, chatbots and the A.I. bots they power are nothing but a series of static math computations strung together in rapid succession. They give the impression of being much more than they are, perhaps even having consciousness\u2014just as Muybridge\u2019s animation gives the impression of movement, perhaps even life. But we know that\u2019s just an illusion, one that is dispelled by looking inside the machine. For Muybridge, we see still photos displayed in succession; for chatbots, we see still math calculations performed in succession.<\/p>\n

No matter how lifelike A.I. systems appear from the outside, we know that they are merely mathematical flip-books. That doesn\u2019t take away from the experiences they provide\u2014movies have enchanted audiences for generations despite being only still photos. But it does mean that we can settle another contentious debate.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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