
That’s a suggestion conscience It originates in quantum weirdness It’s been a little weird for a while now. According to critics, ideas quantum consciousnessand the most famous of which claims that moments of experience arise as superimpositions of quantum collapses in the brain, doing little more than merging one mystery with another. Also, where is the proof? And yet there is a minority voice that insists that we must take the idea seriously.
Hartmut Neven, who drives Google’s Quantum Artificial Intelligence labis among them. He originally trained as a physicist and computational neuroscientist before pioneering computer vision. AI that replicates human ability to understand visual data. Neven later founded Google Quantum AI, and in 2019 his quantum computer became the first lab to solve calculations impossible on a classical computer, a milestone known as quantum dominance. In December 2024, his team announced another step forward with its new quantum processor, Willow, which it says is more powerful and reliable than the previous chip.
But Neven is also interested in the relationship between mind and matter. And now, in a use case for quantum computers that no one saw coming, he believes they could be deployed to test the idea of quantum consciousness. Not even talk The New Scientist about who thinks we live in a multiverse; why Roger Penrose’s theory…