Testing the Conjecture That Quantum Processes Create Conscious Experience

What it is

Peer-reviewed paper in Entropy (28 May 2024) by Hartmut Neven and Adam Zalcman of Google Quantum AI with Christof Koch of the Allen Institute and others, proposing that conscious experience arises whenever a quantum superposition forms, and laying out quantum-biology experiments to test the idea. Open access; the full text is free at PubMed Central (PMC11203236).

Why I recommend it

Useful when someone claims AI is or isn't conscious: this is what a serious proposal on the question actually looks like — a conjecture with proposed experiments, not a verdict. Note the authors' own disclosures: two work for Google and one has a financial interest in a consciousness-measuring device.

Topics

#consciousness #quantum-computing #neuroscience #research #open-access #ai-philosophy #free

Added Sep 23, 2026 · 0 opens