For current AI systems it is very unlikely they are conscious; consciousness may be confused with intelligence, and the assumption that computation is the basis of consciousness is shaky, even if the brain is a biological machine producing consciousness—it may be a different kind of machine that silicon cannot emulate.

Seth is skeptical of using conceivability thought experiments like Mary because they ask us to imagine things we cannot actually imagine (like knowing absolutely everything about anything), making conclusions about what would be surprising unreliable.

We should not invoke new fundamental principles of physics as explanation for consciousness because materialism—the view that consciousness is a property of matter suitably arranged—has rich resources that have not been exhausted, and matter is far more complicated than is typically understood.

About 150 years ago, there appeared to be a 'hard problem of life'—the sense that life could not be explained in physics and chemistry and required something like vital force; but this mystery was dissolved as explanatory mechanisms (like DNA) showed life could be explained physically, providing hope that the hard problem of consciousness might similarly be dissolved with better mechanistic explanations.

All versions of panpsychism encountered to date face not only philosophical problems but also scientific problems: panpsychism itself is not testable and does not lead to testable predictions; only if specific panpsychist theories come up with mathematical principles specifying under what conditions consciousness arises could they become scientifically testable.

The 'real problem' of consciousness (contrasted with the hard problem) focuses on explaining the nature of specific experiences (why vision differs from emotion, why we have a sense of free will) rather than just what people report or do; progress is being made on this real problem through neuroscience and comparative study of different conscious experiences.

The brain operates as a prediction machine: it constantly makes predictions about the causes of sensory signals and updates these predictions based on sensory input; all conscious experience (perception of world, self, free will, emotion) is a form of controlled hallucination grounded in prediction and physiological regulation of the body.

There is a recent New York declaration on animal consciousness attempting to raise awareness that many non-human animals are likely conscious; this reflects uncertainty and debate about consciousness in non-human animals beyond humans and into diverse species.

Seth emphasizes that consciousness is a biological property and that while this does not necessarily mean only biological systems can be conscious, biology is the only known system where consciousness exists.

Seth argues that brain organoids (human brain tissue grown from stem cells in dishes that self-organize and display electrical activity) present a more plausible route to artificial consciousness than digital AI because they are made of actual brain matter.

The brain is a system where what it does cannot be cleanly separated from what it is: neuronal firing communicates with other neurons but also removes metabolic waste; replicating all this in silicon is physically impossible, analogous to trying to build the Brooklyn Bridge out of string cheese.

Consciousness is the most fundamental aspect of human existence because without it there is no world, no self, and nothing at all—making understanding consciousness essential to addressing suffering and well-being

The last 25 years have seen an explosion of scientific work on consciousness, with progress sufficient to suggest the mystery can be solved through understanding brain and body mechanisms rather than requiring non-scientific explanation

In the checker shadow illusion, patches A and B appear to be different shades of gray because the brain uses prior expectations about cast shadows dimming surface appearance to infer that B is lighter than it actually is, even though both patches are the same shade

The brain can rapidly update its perceptual predictions when given new information, dramatically changing what is consciously experienced even when the sensory information itself remains physically identical

Perception depends as much or more on perceptual predictions flowing from the brain outward as on signals coming from the outside world—meaning we actively generate the world we experience as much as we passively receive it

Normal perception is a controlled hallucination in which the brain's predictions are reined in by sensory information from the world—meaning we are all hallucinating all the time, and when we agree about our hallucinations we call that reality

The experience of being a self—the experience of being 'you'—is also a controlled hallucination generated by the brain, despite how unified, continuous, and familiar this experience seems

The brain generates the experience of what is and what is not part of one's body by making predictions based on congruence between visual appearance and tactile input, as demonstrated by the rubber hand illusion

Even the experience of what one's body is appears to be a kind of best guessing or controlled hallucination by the brain, as shown by the rubber hand illusion where the brain's predictions override actual body boundaries