Max Tegmark Says Physics Just Swallowed AI

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MIT physicist Max Tegmark argues AI now belongs inside physics—and that consciousness will be next. He separates intelligence (goal-achieving behavior) from consciousness (subjective experience), sketches falsifiable experiments using brain-reading tech and rigorous theories (e.g., IIT/φ), and shows how ideas like Hopfield energy landscapes make memory “feel” like physics. We get into mechanistic interpretability (sparse autoencoders), number representations that snap into clean geometry, why RLHF mostly aligns behavior (not goals), and the stakes as AI progress accelerates from “underhyped” to civilization-shaping. It’s a masterclass on where mind, math, and machines collide.

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Timestamps:
00:00 - Why AI is the New Frontier of Physics
09:38 - Is Consciousness Just a Byproduct of Intelligence?
16:43 - A Falsifiable Theory of Consciousness? (The MEG Helmet Experiment)
27:34 - Beyond Neural Correlates: A New Paradigm for Scientific Inquiry
38:40 - Humanity: The Masters of Underestimation (Fermi's AI Analogy)
51:27 - What Are an AI's True Goals? (The Serial Killer Problem)
1:03:42 - Fermat's Principle, Entropy, and the Physics of Goals
1:15:52 - Eureka Moment: When an AI Discovered Geometry on Its Own
1:30:01 - Refuting the "AI Doomers": We Have More Agency Than We Think

Links mentioned:
Max’s Papers: https://scholar.google.com/citations?...
Language Models Use Trigonometry to Do Addition [Paper]: https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.00873
Generalization from Starvation [Paper]: https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.08255
Geoffrey Hinton [TOE]:    • Why The "Godfather of AI" Now Fears His Ow...  
Michael Levin [TOE]:    • Michael Levin: Consciousness, Biology, Uni...  
Iceberg of Consciousness [TOE]:    • The Complete Consciousness Iceberg | 2 Hou...  
Improved Measures of Integrated Information [Paper]: https://arxiv.org/abs/1601.02626
David Kaiser [TOE]:    • MIT Scientist's Discovery: "Black Holes Mi...  
Iain McGilchrist [TOE]:    • Matter and Mind: Rethinking Consciousness ...  
Elan Barenholtz & William Hahn [TOE]:    • Language Without Meaning: How LLMs Exposed...  
Daniel Schmachtenberger [TOE]:    • The Dark Side of Conscious Ai | Daniel Sch...  
Ted Jacobson [TOE]:    • The Physicist Who Proved Entropy = Gravity  
The “All Possible Paths” Myth [TOE]:    • Debunking Veritasium: The “All Possible Pa...  

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