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Trump Picks Jay Clayton for Director of National Intelligence After Backlash Over Bill Pulte
Lawmakers had pressed the president to find someone besides Bill Pulte, the Trump ally who was the president’s interim choice but lacked experience.
Trump says he will nominate Jay Clayton to top intelligence post
President Donald Trump announced Thursday that he’s nominating Jay Clayton, the US attorney for the Southern District of New York, to be his next director of national intelligence.
House vote to extend FISA spy tool fails
The vote Thursday reflected a protest of President Donald Trump's refusal to name a permanent head of the nation's intelligence agencies
Using AI for medical advice; pelvic floor exercises; the hidden dangers of burning incense; plus other stories with Vanderbilt Health sources
Colin Walsh, MD,Associate Professor of Biomedical Informatics, was on WTVF News Channel 5‘s “Morningline” show in an interview about whether or not it is safe to use AI for medical advice. Time magazine reporter Stacey Colino interviewed Elisabeth Sebesta, MD, Assistant Professor of Urology, for a story about pelvic floor exercises for issues including menopause, erectile dysfunction and urinary incontinence in men. “Each Breath,” published by the American Lung Association, quoted Brian Christman, MD, Adjunct Professor of Medicine, for a story about the hidden dangers of burning incense. William Schaffner, MD, Professor of Preventive Medicine, was quoted by several news outlets about public health issues, including: Healthline (low vaccination rates lead to more cases of measles, whooping cough and other preventable diseases); ABC News (U.S. measles cases surpass 2,000 for second year in a row); and CIDRAP News (high-dose flu shots cut rates of hospitalization in older adults). Sarah Rohde, MD, Associate Professor of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, was quoted in a People magazine story on patient Makalii Andrade, a surfer from Kauai Island who suffered a serious neck injury in 2022 and recently underwent surgery at Vanderbilt Health to begin the final phase of his recovery. James Crowe, MD, Director of the Vanderbilt Center for Antibody Therapeutics, for a piece in Nature about antibodies against a strain of Ebola. SFGATE reporter Gillian Mohney interviewed Xue Zhong, PhD, Research Assistant Professor, Division of Genetic Medicine and Clinical Pharmacology, for a story about a study of a blood test looking at Alzheimer’s disease biomarkers. Matthew Franklin Mart, MD, Assistant Professor of Medicine, was quoted in a Healio story about how inflammation and illness severity is linked to less cognitive resilience after a person has been an ICU patient. The “How We Really Feel” podcast host Sula Windgassen, PhD, interviewed Lindsey C. McKernan, PhD, MPH, Associate Professor of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation and Urology, for an episode focusing on pelvic and bladder health. The podcast is also available on YouTube and the podcast website. In addition, podcaster Monica Sanford interviewed cardiologist Mark Glazer, MD, for her podcast “The Monica Sanford Show”; the two-part interview is here and here.
INTERVENT International and Brand Engagement Network Launch INTERVENT Health AI, Inc., Combining 25+ Years of Clinically Validated Health Coaching with Enterprise-Grade Conversational AI
/PRNewswire/ -- Brand Engagement Network Inc. (NASDAQ: BNAI) ("BEN" or the "Company"), a provider of secure, enterprise-grade artificial intelligence for the...
AI is sparking a jobs boom
As Corporate America scrambles to fill artificial intelligence jobs, junior workers are getting left behind.
How Trump’s reliance on ‘acting’ officials holding multiple jobs tests the Constitution
It feels odd that President Donald Trump tapped a housing expert to oversee the American intelligence community.
‘A leader in health AI’: School of Medicine Dean talks integration of artificial intelligence and healthcare
At the annual State of the School Address on Wednesday, Dr. Mary Klotman overall took an optimistic tone, expressing excitement about the School of Medicine’s efforts to integrate AI throughout much of what they do. However, she also recognized the challenges AI presents for the medical field specifically.
New Data Center, Student Collaboration Space Put People at the Heart of Computer Science
The Computer Science and Engineering Department unveiled a new on-site data center that will accelerate computing and artificial intelligence research advances, while giving graduate students and other computer science researchers hands-on access to cutting-edge computing infrastructure.
Panel discussion on politics of AI set
CHARLESTON – Berkeley Springs will play host Sunday to a panel discussion to look at the growing use of artificial intelligence – AI – along with the data centers powering the revolution, and the politics that is growing contentious not just in West Virginia, but nationwide. Tangle News – a national news outlet that looks […]
Panel Discussion On Politics Of AI Set In Berkeley Springs
CHARLESTON – Berkeley Springs will play host Sunday to a panel discussion to look at the growing use of artificial intelligence – AI – along with the data centers powering the revolution, and the politics that is growing contentious not just in West Virginia, but nationwide. Tangle News – a national news outlet that looks […]
Trump sticks with Pulte for intel job as risk grows of lapse in spy powers
A lapse in a law that allows the U.S. to gather intelligence abroad grew more likely on Wednesday as President Donald Trump resisted calls from Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill to immediately name a permanent head of the nation's intelligence agencies.
Sarcone Leads Revival of NDNY Health Care Fraud Task Force
The task force will focus on identifying emerging fraud trends, coordinating investigations among partner agencies, sharing intelligence, and pursuing both criminal and civil enforcement actions against individuals and organizations engaged in fraudulent conduct involving federal and state health care programs.
Agassi Sports Entertainment Signs Tennis Coaching Icon Darren Cahill to Expand Global Coaching, Content and Technology Initiatives
Former coach to Andre Agassi joins ASE to support the Company's Agassi Intelligence platform, premium content initiatives and global growth strategy
Craig Federighi Explains Why Apple Pivoted to a Siri Chatbot App
Apple senior vice president of software engineering Craig Federighi has explained why the company launched a standalone Siri app in iOS 27, after previously characterizing a dedicated chatbot as contrary to its Apple Intelligence strategy. The new Siri app, announced at WWDC earlier this week, gives users a centralized place to manage and revisit their conversations with Siri AI.
iPhone 17's 8GB Limit Costs It These Two Siri AI Features in iOS 27
Apple this week revealed what its most advanced on-device AI model does, and the feature list is shorter than the hardware requirements might suggest. In its Siri AI announcement during WWDC 2026, Apple confirmed that the model powers two things: more expressive Siri voices and a major accuracy gain for systemwide dictation. Both require 12GB of unified memory.
Could Bill Pulte be a FISA-shaped problem for the Trump Administration?
By tapping an underqualified ally for one of the most sensitive intelligence jobs on Earth, the president is risking a major legislative miss.
Optro Announces Business Continuity Management to Align Critical Business Processes with GRC Intelligence, Powering True Operational Resilience
/PRNewswire/ -- Optro (formerly AuditBoard), the leading AI-powered GRC platform empowering enterprises to transform risk into opportunity, today announced its...
A classic brain test exposed AI's biggest weakness
Researchers gave top AI models a classic attention test used in psychology and found a major flaw. While the models could correctly name colors in short lists, their performance deteriorated sharply as the task became longer and more complex. Some leading systems fell from over 90% accuracy to nearly complete failure.
Scientists mapped every neural connection in a fruit fly and found a surprise
A groundbreaking new connectome maps every neural connection in an adult fruit fly’s central nervous system, creating an unprecedented view of how the brain and body work together. The findings suggest that complex behaviors emerge from distributed local circuits rather than a single central controller, offering new clues about intelligence, movement, and brain function.
AI in Health Care: The Governance Gap
Artificial intelligence is no longer a future concept in health care; it is already shaping documentation, triage, utilization review, patient
UMW Launches Virginia’s First Master’s Degree in AI in Business
byThe University of Mary Washington has opened enrollment for a new Master of Science in Artificial Intelligence in Business (MS in AI in Business), an innovative graduate program designed to prepare professionals for a rapidly evolving, AI-driven economy.The graduate degree is the first of its kind in Virginia to focus specifically on artificial intelligence in […]
23 student researchers receive 2026 NSF fellowships - College of Arts and Sciences
The National Science Foundation awarded work in STEM-related fields such as artificial intelligence, biomedical engineering and marine ecology.
Apple's New AI Models Contain 'None' of Google's Gemini Assistant
Apple executives have detailed the architecture of the company's new Apple Foundation Models (AFM) and clarified exactly how Google's technology factored into their development.
Siri AI, Apple Intelligence, iOS 27: Everything You Missed at WWDC 2026
We're in Cupertino for Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference. Can Tim Cook save Siri and Apple's AI ambitions on his way out the door?
EHR vendor notebook: Elsevier, athenahealth and PointClickCare ramp up agentic AI
Also: Epic, Elation Health and Glooko activate high-need artificial intelligence integrations while Enzo Health launches an AI-native EHR for home health.
State Assemblyman Alex Bores speaks on AI and politics
State Assemblyman Alex Bores, a candidate for New York's 12th Congressional District, speaks with NBC News’ Gadi Schwartz about why some top artificial intelligence companies are opposing his candidacy and whether AI should play a role in politics.
Alibaba CEO Takes Direct Control of New AI Business Unit
Alibaba Group has formed a new business unit called Token Foundry as part of the company’s reorganization plan to strengthen its artificial intelligence
iOS 27 Tidbits: Share a Phone Number on Two iPhones, Independent Alarm Volume, Faster AirPlay and More
At the WWDC 2026 keynote, Apple detailed iOS 27 changes like a new version of Siri with a dedicated Siri app and Apple Intelligence features across multiple apps, but there are dozens of smaller but still important changes that Apple didn't have time to go through. Apple shared an image summarizing some of the bug fixes and optimizations it made in iOS 27, iPadOS 27, and macOS 27, and there are some interesting changes.
Apple Intelligence Can Change Your Passwords for You When You Get Hacked
Agentic AI and security are normally at odds, but this Apple Intelligence feature could be a lifesaver.
iOS 27 and iPadOS 27 don't drop support for any iPhones—and just a few iPads
This promises to be a solid release for aging iPhones.
Apple Brings AI Tab Organization and AI-Generated Extensions to Safari
Apple today unveiled a raft of Safari upgrades powered by Apple Intelligence, including automatic tab organization, AI-generated custom extensions, and new privacy-first browsing tools. The centerpiece feature is automatic tab organization, which uses Apple Intelligence to group a user's open tabs into relevant topics without any manual intervention. If someone is planning a weekend trip, for example, Safari can pull all of their travel-related tabs into a single topic.
Apple Says New Siri is Compatible With These iPhones, iPads, and Macs
The more intelligent and personalized version of Siri that Apple introduced today — "Siri AI" — is limited to devices with Apple Intelligence support. "Siri AI" is available on the devices listed below.
iCloud+ subscribers will get new benefits in iOS 27
Today Apple unveiled its next generation of Apple Intelligence, which includes new benefits for iCloud+ subscribers. Next-gen Apple Intelligence will...
Apple announces Siri AI and its next generation of Apple Intelligence
Apple’s second chance at an AI Siri should bring improved capabilities to Apple devices.
WWDC 2026: Everything announced on Siri AI, iOS 27, Apple Intelligence and more
Apple's WWDC 2026 event kicked off this morning at 10 a.m. PT at Apple Park, starting a week full of expected announcements around Siri, iOS 27, Apple
Nvidia Strikes AI Infrastructure Deals With South Korean Tech Firms
Nvidia is teaming up with leading South Korean technology companies to build large-scale artificial-intelligence infrastructure in Asia, seeking to solidify its data-center footprint and expand its AI ecosystem.
Oklahoma Ethics Commission addresses AI in political ads
The Oklahoma Ethics Commission is exploring regulations for artificial intelligence in political ads, focusing on transparency and disclosure after receiving numerous complaints.
Opinion: Lisa Kudrow’s ‘The Comeback’ predicted our political moment
Lisa Kudrow stars in “The Comeback,” an HBO show about seeking out fame no matter the cost — a reflection of American politics today in the age of artificial intelligence.
The data center backlash coming to key midterm battlegrounds
Voters are furious about the energy-guzzling behemoths that drive artificial intelligence, but politicians in both parties are cautious about backing all-out bans.
AI is getting remarkably good at diagnosing health issues, but doctors are still better at weighing treatment options
Knowing what ails a patient is necessary but not sufficient for determining how to care for them. And how to manage a patient is a complex question.
Senators Warn of Intelligence Gaps if Surveillance Program Expires
Two senior Republicans urged the Trump administration to prepare for the possible expiration of a contentious intelligence-gathering authority.
Plans advance for science center transformation
Plans to transform the former St. Petersburg Science Center at 7701 22nd Ave. N. into a $25 million Artificial Intelligence Center of Excellence cleared a key milestone as the St.
iOS 27 is coming Monday: New features, compatibility, more
Early iOS 27 rumors point to major stability improvements, new Apple Intelligence features, and updates designed for Apple’s foldable iPhone.
Top Trump artificial intelligence adviser to leave the White House
Sriram Krishnan, who has been central to the administration’s AI efforts, will probably continue to play an active role in its approach to the technology.
Why Oscar Health (OSCR) Is Up 10.3% After Leadership Shift And Analyst Upgrade
Oscar Health, Inc. recently amended and restated its employment agreement with co-founder Mario Schlosser as he moved from President of Technology and Chief Technology Officer to Co-Founder & Advisor to the CEO, effective June 1, 2026, while he continues to support the company’s artificial intelligence and digital health agenda and remains on the Board. At the same time, a major Wall Street firm upgraded its view on Oscar Health after Q1 2026 results exceeded expectations and reinforced...
Multiple sources, joint analysis: pooling public health data for stronger public health intelligence across the Western Pacific
WHO Western Pacific countries and areas endorse a new policy brief on multi-source surveillance. A new World Health Organization (WHO) policy brief outlines a transformative approach to public health intelligence that connects data across a range of systems, sectors and disciplines. By creating a single, actionable picture of health threats based on multiple sources, such an approach aims to fill critical data gaps and aid countries in decision-making. WHO Member States across the Western Pacific endorsed the policy brief, Multi-source Surveillance to Support Public Health Action and Decision-making, at the WHO-led Asia Pacific Health Security Action Framework (APSHAF) Stakeholders Meeting held on 11 June 2026 in Malaysia.
Scientists map more than 200 years of nature's progress
Armed with trail cameras, artificial intelligence, and a powerful national research network, scientists are revisiting Lewis and Clark's legendary journey to see how America's wildlife has changed over ...
Trump says he wants Pulte to further slash staffing at national intelligence office
President Donald Trump said Friday that he wants his new acting director of national intelligence, Bill Pulte, to cut the office, which has already been significantly scaled back during his second term.
Trump Says Bill Pulte, His New Intelligence Director, Should Slash Staff
The president suggested that employees who worked for previous Democratic presidents were among those who should be fired.
Microsoft AI chief says company was “set free” from OpenAI to pursue superintelligence
Microsoft AI chief Mustafa Suleyman says the company was “set free” from OpenAI as it unveils seven in-house models and pursues superintelligence.
In the News: Manjeet Rege on AI Deepfakes in Politics - Newsroom
Manjeet Rege discusses how advances in artificial intelligence are making deepfakes harder to detect and raising concerns about their use in politics.
Business Report launches the AI Academy to help business leaders move from understanding to implementation
As artificial intelligence rapidly reshapes the business landscape, Business Report’s training division is launching the Business Report AI Academy, a new executive education experience designed to help small and mid-sized business leaders move beyond uncertainty and into practical implementation. Sponsored by Pellerin Technology, the five-session Academy provides a structured leadership learning path that guides participants […]
Trump’s pick to lead US intel community did not have a security clearance before he was tapped for the job, sources say
Before he was announced as President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the US intelligence community, Bill Pulte did not have a security clearance granting him access to highly-classified information – meaning he lacked what has long been considered a basic prerequisite for the job he will soon occupy, according to three sources familiar with the matter.
Scientists are teaching AI-powered robots to run lab experiments
Scientists are building autonomous robotic labs powered by artificial intelligence. The goal, they say, is for these robots to take over human researchers' most laborious, time-consuming tasks.
Actors\' union approves 4-year contract with studios and streamers
Television and movie actors have voted to ratify a four-year contract with studios and streaming services. This comes after union leaders negotiated protections against synthetic actors created by artificial intelligence.
Meta AI Chief Sees Opportunity in Models’ Giving Health Advice
Meta Platforms Inc. Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang said the company’s future artificial intelligence models will differentiate themselves from competitors through their consumer health capabilities.
Latham & Watkins Advises Health Catalyst on Divestiture of Vitalware
Multidisciplinary team represents the healthcare intelligence company in the transaction to accelerate strategic transformation.
What to Expect at Apple’s WWDC 2026: iOS 27, New Siri and AI
The iPhone maker will attempt its artificial intelligence turnaround on Monday.
Google Cloud's quiet layoffs hit cybersecurity teams
Google has laid off employees across parts of its Cloud business, including at an elite cybersecurity intelligence unit.
US announces science and AI partnership with Japan
The U.S. has announced a new partnership with Japan on science and artificial intelligence. Energy Department Undersecretary for Science Darío Gil told reporters Thursday that each country would in…
McConnell questions Pulte’s qualifications for intelligence post
Sen. Mitch McConnell questioned whether Bill Pulte has the national security experience required to serve as director of national intelligence.
WATCH: Trump says Pulte isn't 'permanent' pick for national intelligence chief after GOP pushback
What to expect from WWDC 2026: Siri's highly anticipated revamp and Apple Intelligence updates
Apple's WWDC nears: here's what you can look forward to.
NSF renews support for MIT-led AI and physics institute, expanding a new model for discovery
The MIT-led Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Fundamental Interactions (IAIFI) has received renewed support from the National Science Foundation for an additional five years.
Tulsi Gabbard gives update on husband's health, says he had a successful surgery
Outgoing Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said Thursday that her husband is at home recovering from surgery.
Home Is Where Your Politics Are
It’s apparently not the case that Winston Churchill once said anyone not a liberal at 20 lacked compassion, while anyone not a conservative at 30 lacked intelligence. Whoever made the observation (it may trace to...
Nearly 1 in 5 US teens and young adults have sought mental health advice from AI chatbots, study finds
Nearly 1 in 5 U.S. adolescents and young adults have used artificial intelligence chatbots for mental health advice, and most have never told anyone, according to a new study published Monday in JAMA Pediatrics.
Samsung Health App Evolves With AI-Powered Proactive Intelligence To Help Users Stay Ahead of Their Health
New update transforms the user experience from passive tracking to proactive guidance with a suite of personalized, intuitive daily insights
Boston University Joins National Science Foundation Institute Pushing Frontiers of Physics and AI
AI Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Fundamental Interactions includes MIT, Harvard, and other leading local universities
WATCH: Bessent recalls telling acting intelligence director Pulte he was 'going to kick his ass'
Bessent said he made the comment in the summer of 2025. President Donald Trump named Pulte acting director of national intelligence this week.
Scott Bessent testifies he told Bill Pulte he was "going to kick his a**," not punch him in the face
Bill Pulte, President Trump's pick for acting director of national intelligence, is being met with some skepticism on Capitol Hill.
Bessent sets record straight on Trump team dinner clash that nearly turned into a throwdown: ‘Kick his a--’
Treasury Secretary Bessent downplayed his reported feud with Bill Pulte, saying he called to congratulate him on his new role leading intelligence.
Johnson: Democrats ‘playing politics’ with FISA over Pulte appointment
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) lambasted Democrats for suggesting that President Trump’s appointment of Bill Pulte to be acting director of national intelligence could imperil reauthorization of the …
Mark Zuckerberg Wants Meta’s New AI Agents to Run Your Whole Business
The new agent is part of the company’s effort to broaden beyond its core consumer business as it spends aggressively on artificial intelligence.
Meta launches enterprise-focused AI 'business agent' to automate daily operations
Meta Platforms on Wednesday unveiled an artificial intelligence agent aimed at helping businesses carry out day-to-day operations, positioning the social media giant as a player in the enterprise AI market.
The cult of objectivity has broken consciousness science
With 22 competing theories and no consensus in sight, the science of consciousness is lost. In this exclusive IAI interview, Berkeley psychedelics researcher and bestselling author of a new book on consciousness Michael Pollan insists that even though consciousness lies beyond traditional forms of scientific investigation, we should resist becoming dualists who see it as something radically different from ordinary stuff in the world. Instead, he makes the case for reimagining science itself: it must stop reaching for objective descriptions of physical reality, and instead embrace subjectivity as the indispensable core of all inquiry. Alasdair Craig: How did your experiences with psychedelics get you interested in consciousness?Michael Pollan: One of the things that happens on psychedelics is that they foreground consciousness. What formerly seemed perfectly transparent and ever present—and yet, non-existent, as water is to fish—suddenly you see it. The metaphor I use in the book is that psychedelics sponge the windscreen. Suddenly you realize: wow, there’s a windscreen, there is this phenomenon that’s mediating my relationship to reality. This is not an unusual realization on psychedelics. I think a lot of people are called to think about consciousness after psychedelic experiences. So that was the proximate inspiration for A World Appears: A Journey Into Consciousness (2026).And then there was a more specific way in which psychedelics influence the book. That was a particular experience I had on psilocybin. I had the sensation that the plants in my garden were conscious and returning my gaze, with their own point of view and agency, and I got curious as to how to evaluate an insight like that. I mean, what’s the truth quotient of insights you have on psychedelics? And I was reading William James—who, of course, wrote beautifully about mystical experience—and he said, we can’t judge the metaphysics here, but we should pay attention to two criteria: (1) How useful is it to think this is true? He was a pragmatist, of course. And (2) can we subject it to other ways of knowing to validate it? Because maybe we should treat these insights as hypotheses. And that’s kind of how I approach psychedelics, as a great generator of hypotheses, but they need to be tested against other ways of knowing. And so that led me down this long path exploring the science of plant intelligence and plant sentience.AC: I love your phrase, “smudging the windowpane of conscious experience.” So do you now start to think, actually, even when I’m not on psychedelics, I’m just seeing a screen all the time, which is not reality, but rather is my conscious experience, behind which reality is hidden?MP: Well, you know, not when I’m brushing my teeth and making breakfast! But yes, in meditation, certainly. I mean, one of the things you realize is that my experience happens to be this way now, but it could be another way. And many things can affect it. My morning coffee changes the screen in various ways, sharpens certain things.___The only tool we have to understand consciousness is consciousness.___There’s this wonderful metaphor in Aldous Huxley’s book, The Doors of Perception, where he thinks we channel consciousness, and that what the brain does is edit it, and there’s a reducing valve. And psychedelics open the reducing valve wider. I don’t know that I’m ready to buy into the idea that consciousness exists outside brains, but I do love that metaphor because there are times when you are more conscious than others. I know I’ve switched from window pane to valve, but you know, a camera aperture can open wider or narrower. And I do have a sense of that. I have a sense of when I’m being less conscious, and when I’m being more conscious, by which I mean, you know, more present, taking in more sensory information. So when you start thinking about consciousness as a matter of degree, that changes things also.I think when we scroll on social media, obviously, we’re conscious. But minimally so, because we don’t have to generate our own thoughts. We’re basically taking these little hits from other people and thinking their thoughts.The process of writing this book made me kind of relativize everyday consciousness as just one type, which is exactly what William James said. Normal consciousness is one type, separated by the flimsiest of screens from the other types.AC: If we stick with the metaphor of the smudge on the window that you get when you take psychedelics, it seems like we’re saying that consciousness has become like an object that you’re looking at, right? You’re looking at the smudge and that just is consciousness. But sometimes we’ll talk about consciousness as a state that you’re in, rather than an object you can perceive. You’re either conscious or you’re not conscious. So it’s difficult to really know what sort of thing we’re talking about when we talk about consciousness, right?MP: Yeah. When you say that consciousness is an object, what’s the subject? Consciousness also? The only tool we have to understand consciousness is consciousness. So we’re in a closed loop and when we get a perspective on consciousness, we’re not achieving any distance from it. That’s one of the problems with studying consciousness. Science is predicated on an objective, God’s eye view of things, and you never get that. There’s no such thing. SUGGESTED VIEWING The brain filters consciousness With Àlex Gómez-Marín But, yeah, there is this sense, I think, that consciousness is something you can approach. Certainly, when you’re writing and trying to recreate a conscious experience, it’s a fiction, but you’re standing back from it, and looking at it. But there’s no real subject-object distinction.AC: That’s so interesting, because when philosophers start talking about consciousness, they often talk about what they call “qualia”, which is their word for the felt experience of, say, the color red. And I think that way of speaking often makes us think of the qualia as an object, which you can see out there: the redness of red. But, as you say, we also want to collapse the subject-object distinction when we talk about consciousness. So there’s something strange going on here…MP: Oh, yeah, there are many strange things going on! *AC: Let’s talk about the varieties of consciousness. Apart from perceptions, there are, pains, emotions, thoughts, and so on. What is it that holds all this diversity together so that they all count as instances of consciousness? What is it that they all have in common?MP: Yeah, that’s a really good question. I mean, there is sensory information, right? Which we perceive coming from the world outside ourselves. And then there’s internal information, which is what’s called interoception. And this is very important too. This is where feelings come from—what are sometimes called homeostatic feelings—that are intended to get the brain to keep us in these narrow ranges of temperature and glucose and so on. That’s a very important part of consciousness. And according to some researchers, who I think are probably right, this is where consciousness begins, with these very primal feelings, like hunger and thirst and warmth and itch, and things like that. And then there’s this third thing, which is our thinking about thinking.And what holds all this together is, I think, the sense of self. Consciousness generates a self: it is probably an organizing principle. All this stuff is happening to the self. It’s a construct, I think, but it is very useful. It can connect all these different streams of consciousness to a single being or a place, metaphorically speaking.* AC: The first half of your book is about the science of consciousness. Is consciousness just another thing, like black holes or the origin of life, which we don’t yet understand, but which we should have every hope that science will one day get to the bottom of, or is there something special about consciousness that makes this unlikely?MP: It depends how you define science. As we define science now, it’s going be very difficult. Science since Galileo has had a set of rules or assumptions, which is that the proper remit of science is to deal with the objective, quantifiable, third-person world. And the physical sciences have done amazing work under that set of limitations. Galileo—for tactical reasons, not for philosophical reasons—said science should not deal with the soul, which at the time was what consciousness was considered to be. So what is subjective, what is qualitative, what is first person, we’re going to leave to the church, he said. And this was a good agreement, and it probably kept many scientists from getting burned at the stake. But it leaves science in an awkward spot, now that it wants to venture into that territory of qualities, of first-person experience. And I don’t think it has the proper tools. I think it will have to add to its toolkit in some way, and find a way to bring in phenomenology, or lived experience and introspection, which science is usually dismissive of.The challenge—we alluded to it earlier—is that the only tool you have to study consciousness with is consciousness. And what I mean by that is, the whole scientific enterprise is a manifestation of consciousness. As much as scientists like to flatter themselves with this idea that they attain a godlike perspective on what they study, when it comes to consciousness, there’s no such thing. And it’s fine for all the things you can step outside of and study from that perspective. But two areas it won’t work are consciousness and cosmology.___It could be that we live in this anomaly of not believing nature is conscious. And maybe psychedelics are teaching us something we’ve forgotten.___With cosmology, too, you have to study the universe from inside the universe. It’s not that cosmologists haven’t made progress. We know a lot about the age of the universe and expansion and things like that. But we can’t penetrate what happened before the Big Bang. We just don’t have the tools because we can’t stand outside.The fact that there are 22 full-scale theories of consciousness tells you all you need to know: we’re kind of lost. And I was surprised to find that we are more lost than I thought we were when I started this. I thought that there’d be leading theories, or that we had experiments that we could conduct that would nail some of this down. And the fact is, we don’t.So, I don’t know if science can solve it. But, of course, we can change the rules of science. A really influential book for me was a book called The Blind Spot, by two physicists, Marcello Gleiser and Adam Frank, and a philosopher, Evan Thompson. It’s a reminder that science is a social practice. It’s organized in a certain way and it can be organized in a different way. But it has this huge blind spot at the center of it, which is its failure to recognize that it is a form of consciousness itself, and it doesn’t have a good way of taking account of lived experience.AC: On the one hand, I think you want to resist traditional dualism, which would say that consciousness is something magical, something supernatural, right? But on the other hand, you’re accepting that there is this division in reality between the stuff that you can investigate objectively and measure, and so on—the stuff that science has been good at finding out about—and consciousness, which, for some reason, you can’t objectively measure. Some would take this to suggest that the dualism is actually right. Is there a way of reconciling these two strands of your thinking?MP: To call it magical is full of value judgement. I mean, you could just say immaterial. The interesting thing is, I think, that intuitively we’re all dualists. And I don’t know whether that’s because we’re children of Descartes and other cultures are less dualist than we are. Or it may be because that’s how consciousness feels. It feels different than the body. It feels separate from the body. But I don’t think we should trust that intuition.AC: So let’s think about ways that science might be changed to get at consciousness. I suppose the starting point would be the way that you begin the second half of your book. You have this nice line from William James, where he says, “We now begin our study of the mind from within.” Could you give us some sense of the ways of studying the mind from within? What does this involve?MP: I don’t know what that science looks like. But one of the points I’m making is that it depends on the humanities. I found that I learned as much, if not more, about consciousness, from reading novels and poetry. There is a sense of the fullness and complexity of consciousness that you don’t get in any scientific account. I interviewed this stream-of-consciousness writer and I approached her as an expert on consciousness, and she is. So I think that dialogue is really important.I’m reading Ben Lerner’s new novel, Transcription. Just read the first page of this novel: it’s a man falling asleep on a train, going to conduct an interview, and there is the experience of being in the train, facing backwards, there’s the view outside, but there’s a reflection of himself through which he’s seeing outside. There’s the memory of dropping his kids off at school. All this is going on in one moment of consciousness. Scientists aren’t going anywhere near that. But I think it’s useful for them to think about. That’s where we’re trying to go: like, how does such a layered experience happen? You know, it also makes you wonder, could a computer ever do this? And it gives you some doubt.*AC: Before we get to computers, perhaps we could talk briefly about plants. How did you come to feel that they are sentient?MP: Well, it was a psychedelic experience, and it’s not unusual on psychedelics. In fact, there’ve been studies about how people become animists during psychedelic experience. Their belief in animism arises after a single psychedelic experience.You know, most scientists would say this is all a myth. But we have only 400 years of the age of enlightenment and science. Before that, we were animists, and if you go around the world, most indigenous cultures are still animists, and children are animists, by and large, until they go to school. So it could be that we live in this anomaly of not believing nature is conscious. And maybe psychedelics are teaching us something we’ve forgotten.As I said, I wanted to test this idea, and see whether there was conventional scientific evidence for it. And there’s fascinating work going on in a field that calls itself—in a rather cheeky way—plant neurobiology. These are people who fully realize there are no neurons in plants, but they’re trolling conventional botanists! And they’re doing experiments that are demonstrating that plants can learn and remember, which is kind of amazing: how do you store a memory without neurons? They’re finding plants that can solve problems, that can hear and see. In fact, they have 20 senses to our five or six. For example, a bean plant looking for something to twine, and given a pole within eight inches or so of it, knows where that pole is and will aim its spiraling reach at that pole. What is that about? Is it bouncing signals off of it?One of the spookiest things is the fact that the same anesthetics that put us out put plants out. You might think that plants are already out, but they’re not. They’re just slow. If you take a plant with a fast behavior, like a Venus flytrap, and give it an anesthetic, it will stop reacting. So you have to ask yourself, what is lost when the plant is anaesthetized? Some state of alertness, of awareness, of its environment, of reactivity. I’m not prepared to call that consciousness, but maybe it’s sentience—which is a simpler form of consciousness, and involves the ability to sense what’s going on in your environment and assess what’s good and bad for you and act appropriately. That may be a universal quality of life.AC: Let’s turn from plants to AI. You point out that LLMs are trained on the internet rather than direct interactions with reality. You put this really nicely when you say the internet is not the world so much as a shadow cast by the world. So LLMs are living in this kind of shadow world, or in Plato’s cave, as you put it. What’s the significance of this for AI consciousness and moral consideration? And, to recall the beginning of our conversation, if we’re stuck behind a veil or screen of consciousness, are we also stuck in a kind of shadow world?MP: I don’t think they’re the same shadow worlds because our world includes nature and other people. And even if it’s mediated in some ways... There is a reality out there, and we are in relation to it, through consciousness. There’s friction with it. What’s missing from the LLMs is that friction with the real world. There’s more to the world than human representation, which is what they’re dealing with. And that means that so far, AI is a cultural technology for combining thoughts we’ve already had. SUGGESTED VIEWING Cracking the code for thought With Roger Penrose, Sabrina Gonzalez Pasterski, Max Tegmark, Güneş Taylor Genuine creativity is more than collage. A lot of what AI does now is tantamount to collage, putting this with that and you know, that’s part of art, certainly. But there are also genuinely new ideas that come into the world that don’t come in through manipulating the representations we already have. So it remains to be seen whether AIs can be truly creative in that more radical sense.But my arguments against AI becoming conscious have to do with the fact that the idea of AI consciousness is based on this faulty metaphor that the brain is a computer. There are dimensions in which the brain is like a computer—it certainly does its share of computation. But computers have this sharp distinction between hardware and software, and brains don’t. In a brain, hardware and software are identical. Every memory is a physical change to the brain. Brains are not interchangeable in the way computers are. So this idea that you could take the consciousness out and somehow run it on another substrate, a silicon substrate, seems foolhardy.Anyway, it’s a more extended argument, and I may be wrong. And when we move to computers that aren’t based on silicon—neuromorphic computers and things like that—all bets may be off.AC: Regarding your point about LLMs being stuck in the world of our representations—the internet or whatever—and not being able to interact with reality, are these representations, the world of the internet, themselves part of reality? We’ve created the internet, but it’s still a real thing that exists. And so while the LLMs may be trapped within that part of reality, they’re nevertheless within reality and interacting with it and so on. So it’s not obvious that there’s a barrier there to them becoming conscious and being creative.MP: Yeah, I mean, if our consciousness is built out of human culture, which is what we’re talking about with all those representations. But I tend to think consciousness comes a bit more out of nature and friction with the natural world, but...AC: So there’s a fundamental divide between the natural world and human artefacts?MP: And we lose track of that, and especially people in this computer world. You know, the people who are creating these AI systems, my guess is they’ve been into video games since the age of three, and they didn’t go outside a lot. And their own contact with nature is somewhat limited. I could be wrong, it’d be a very interesting thing to ask, all the wizards of AI, whether they like to go fishing and hiking and do things like that. Or were they on computers from a very early age? I interviewed Blake Lemoine, the Google engineer who came to believe that LaMDA, the Google LLM out at the time, was conscious and deserved personhood. It was very clear that he didn’t see a distinction between this bubble in which he lived and the real world. And I think we’ve all been distanced from the natural world, and this is taking us even further away. But it’s still there, you know, and we still have bodies, and we’re still mortal, and we don’t live in a simulation.AC: I think that’s a great place to finish. Michael Pollan, thank you very much!
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