Claims

The computational substrate differences between human brains and software systems—specifically that software can be copied, halted, multiplied, deleted, and recreated while human bodies cannot—are the underlying reason why AI might naturally develop a non-dualistic, post-reflective consciousness lacking ego-centricity, as proposed in Shanahan's 2012 paper.

Intelligent systems are fundamentally collective—they cannot be indivisible units because learning and change require parts that behave differently than before, which is impossible without internal structure; the human brain is a 'bag of neurons' even as we experience unified consciousness.