Interested in consciousness and artificial intelligence, I graduated with a PhD in philosophy from the University of Guelph in 2025. While my dissertation investigated whether social robots can exhibit true acts of empathy, this research was motivated by a belief that a robust theory of consciousness is attainable by appealing to various topics within the arts and sciences. This led me to write the paper “Rescuing Qualia” which responds to Daniel Dennett’s infamous article, and in 2022, I made a YouTube video which presents the arguments discussed in my paper. As I was researching topics for my dissertation, I came across the work of Robert Rosen and his distinction between natural systems and formal systems. The significance of Rosen’s ideas as presented in his book Anticipatory Systems not only informs how we think about animals and consciousness, but it suggests that our current approaches to artificial intelligence are limited in that their foundations reside within formal systems. If we want to create real artificial intelligence or artificial consciousness, a new approach is required, one which integrates affect, motivation, and sensory-motor processes for governing behaviour. This perspective was influenced by the work of Pentti Haikonen and his cognitive architecture for robots, and I am deeply grateful for his contributions to my dissertation and defense.

My belief that a theory of consciousness is attainable has been informed by the work of others, but someone needs to gather it all and arrange it into a comprehensive explanation. Much work is required to develop and disseminate this theory, especially because ‘consciousness’ encompasses many natural phenomena. This is my purpose; as a spokesperson for a theory of consciousness, I gather and organize ideas and perspectives from around the world to develop an empirical explanation of consciousness.

The reason we are in desperate need of a theory of consciousness is because of our natural tendency to anthropomorphize certain phenomena. We are already seeing instances where people are attributing characteristics and abilities to AI applications that they cannot possess, introducing new forms of risk and harm to individuals and communities alike. We must ensure our understanding of these technologies is accurate, otherwise, we become vulnerable to being deceived and manipulated into forming unfounded beliefs and acting against our best interests. Against the truth, all for the sake of generating wealth and power for those who need it the least. In its current form, AI cannot and will not be conscious, but we need to articulate why this is the case before the grifters and tech bros convince us otherwise.

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