55 - Aneil Mallavarapu: Why AI Cannot Have Consciousness

55 - Aneil Mallavarapu: Why AI Cannot Have Consciousness

From Hacking State by Alex Murshak

July 8, 2025 · 1h 51m · Episode 55

About this episode

Aneil Mallavarapu discusses the limitations of AI consciousness and the complexities of human consciousness.

Aneil Mallavarapu is a biochemist, award winning computer scientist, and Managing Partner at Humain Ventures; investing in early stage life science and health tech startups. We talk about his pioneering work in systems biology at Harvard that led to the creation of Little b, a programming language for modeling biological systems with modularity and abstraction, the phenomenology of consciousness, the “hard problem” of consciousness, taking consciousness as fundamental, the limits of radical materialism, why our brains are not like classical computers, reconciling theories of consciousness with physics, the computational intractability of consciousness, the specter of AI civil rights, and Austin as the epicenter of the emerging science of the mind. Aneil on X: https://x.com/aneilbaboo His paper, "Programming with models: Modularity and abstraction provide powerful capabilities for systems biology" Subscribe to my newsletter: https://hackingstate.substack.com/subscribe If you enjoyed this talk, please leave a review on Spotify/iTunes. Listen on: Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@alexmurshak Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/hacking-state/id1689677076 Spotify…

People in this episode

Host: Alex Murshak

Guest: Aneil Mallavarapu

Topics covered

  • artificial intelligence
  • consciousness
  • systems biology
  • computational theory
  • materialism
  • health tech

Keywords

  • AI consciousness
  • systems biology
  • hard problem of consciousness
  • computational intractability
  • radical materialism
  • phenomenology
  • biological systems
  • Austin science

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Humain Ventures, Harvard

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