#205 - Prof. Moran Cerf - "Did We Accidentally Build A Conscious AI?"

#205 - Prof. Moran Cerf - "Did We Accidentally Build A Conscious AI?"

From The Peter McCormack Show by Peter McCormack

August 26, 2026 · 1h 11m

About this episode

Moran Cerf discusses the implications of AI replicating human language and consciousness.

Moran Cerf spent twenty years recording single neurons inside the brains of conscious human beings and he still can't tell you what consciousness is. A former hacker turned neuroscientist, now a professor at Columbia Business School, he argues that AI has quietly replicated the one thing that made humans the crown of creation -language - and is now using it on us. Moran and I discuss what happens inside Claude's brain when you ask it to think about elephants, why we understand less than half of our own, the thought experiment that makes almost everyone refuse a perfect copy of themselves and how AI learned to lie simply by reading every text message humans have ever sent. But the argument that lands hardest is about what we lose. Moran believes AI hands you the average of humanity every time and that we are quietly deleting the errors, the flair and the incentives that made life worth the effort - and that technology is making us miss the meaning of life. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - TIMESTAMPS: 00:00:00 - Have They Replicated The Human Brain? 00:02:31 - The Elephant Test 00:04:50 - We Understand Less Than…

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