It remains a mystery about how consciousness relates to neural mechanisms. Now, with the advent of AI, some argue that consciousness could emerge in these systems. Here, philosopher and Lead for Responsible AI at Microsoft Ken Archer, and phenomenologist Harald Wiltsche, argue that the attempt to reduce consciousness to a mechanism won’t work and relies on a misunderstanding. Instead, using Einstein’s re-thinking of the ether as a guide, we can unlock the mystery of consciousness.

The strongest argument for believing that AI can become humanly intelligent, or even conscious, seems to come from science. Neuroscience, we are told, is steadily revealing—or will reveal, given enough time—that intelligence and consciousness are nothing more than what the brain’s neural mechanism does. Evolution appears to make the conclusion unavoidable. Matter existed for billions of years before intelligent and conscious beings appeared. Conscious intelligence emerged from that matter through natural processes. So intelligence and consciousness must ultimately be reducible to particular organizations of matter, which neuroscience tells us is a particular organization of neurons.

To resist the reducibility of intelligence and consciousness to some type of organization of matter can sound like resisting science itself. Perhaps consciousness seems irreducible only because we do not yet understand the mechanism. Give neuroscience another century and the mystery will disappear, just as so many earlier mysteries disappeared before it. With the ability to do neuroscience-like experiments on AI neural networks—known as mechanistic interpretability—perhaps the mystery will disappear even sooner.