Nothing special about human mind that can't be reproduced by AI: DeepMind's Mustafa Suleyman

Never has so much data been digitised in the history of human species, Mustafa said.

There is nothing “truly” unique or special about the human mind that cannot be reproduced by artificial intelligence (AI), said Mustafa Suleyman, co-founder, Inflection AI and DeepMind.

“I think it is a controversial statement but one that is becoming clearer and clearer to be true over the last few years,” Suleyman said at the Nasscom Technology Leadership Forum (NTLF) 2024.

He said it is “mind blowing” that these large language models (LLM) can consume so much information from the text available on the open web. Never has so much data been digitised in the history of human species, he said.

Suleyman said he has spent too much time “thinking about thinking”, and that how it can be reproduced. “And ultimately whatever it takes to reduce what it is that makes us human, our special intelligence, our ability to make predictions, reduce that to an algorithmic construct,” he further said.

However, AI would be very useful without consciousness and not with it, because it will be a quite “slippery concept," Suleyman said.

He further said, “We cannot set off on a path where we're creating artificial consciousness (as it) is really the anchor of our human rights as a species.” He added that humanity will face the ethical challenge of a lifetime if AI assumes consciousness.