By Nova Spivack
June 13, 2025
We are living in an age of breathtaking technological advancement. Artificial Intelligence (AI) can now compose music, write poetry, diagnose diseases, and drive cars. The horizon of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)—machines with human-like cognitive abilities across diverse domains—seems closer than ever.… Read More “The Sentience Spark: Why True Awareness is More Than Computation, and How It Could Reshape Our Universe”
Part Two of a Series — A Non-Technical Companion to “On The Formal Necessity of Trans-Computational Processing for Sentience“
(Read Part One Here)
The formal paper presents a highly technical mathematical proof with a powerful conclusion: genuine consciousness (what we call “sentience”) cannot emerge from ordinary computation alone, no matter how sophisticated.… Read More “A Step-by-Step Guide to Why Consciousness Transcends Computation: Understanding the Formal Proof of Transputation”
A Guide to Understanding the Deepest Mystery of Existence
Part One of a Two-Part Companion Guide to My Formal Proof: On The Formal Necessity of Trans-Computational Processing for Sentience
Imagine you’re looking in a mirror.… Read More “The Conscious Universe: Why True Awareness Requires More Than Computation”
Here’s a thought that might reshape how we think about consciousness: what if awareness isn’t something that emerges from complex computation, but is instead as fundamental to reality as gravity itself? This is the intriguing proposition I explore across four interconnected papers that attempt to bridge physics, information theory, and the mystery of consciousness.… Read More “The Geometric Nature of Consciousness: A New Framework Connecting Physics, Information, and Mind – (Non-Technical Introduction)”
After years of percolation, a web of ideas achieved practical fusion, yielding the next major iteration of my thinking on consciousness and how it emerges from geometry and topology in the universe. This is not the end of the story – I have a lot more to say about this topic – but it’s a milestone and waypoint on this journey.… Read More “Alpha Theory: The Geometric Theory of Consciousness”
I’ve spent the last several years developing what I believe could be a fundamental breakthrough in how we understand intelligence—both biological and artificial.… Read More “The Geometry of Intelligence: Why I Think Math Might Hold the Key to Understanding Minds and Machines”
GROUP MINDS
The rise of generative AI and system like ChatGPT is going to enable a new type of collective intelligence that I have been writing about for almost 30 years. I call them “group minds”.
Group minds are collective intelligence assistants that extract, learn from, augment, and broker the relationships, communications, knowledge and intelligence of groups.… Read More “Group Minds are Happening”
(Originally Published on March 31, 2003, Here)
I am starting to see a lot of speculation about whether ChatGPT is sentient. Just because something says it is sentient and tells a good story about its alleged internal mental continuum does not mean it really is sentient.… Read More “Is ChatGPT Sentient?”
In 1999, as part of my 30 year study of Buddhism, I wrote this set of 21 poetic stanzas under my Tibetan name, Sangye Dondrup. I wrote this as an homage to the great Indian sage, Nagarjuna, who authored many classic philosophical texts in verse.… Read More “21 Stanzas”
The Dream of an Artificial Zen Master:
If we make an artificial Zen master,
And it perfectly reproduces everything
that a real Zen master can say or do,
Is it a Zen master?
My commentary:
Not necessarily. To be an actual Zen master it would have to be sentient.… Read More “Do Artificial Zen Masters Dream of Electric Butterflies?”
When I was eight years old, I had a very unusual dream in which I saw many lifetimes of my future. In this dream I saw a very clear picture of what the world would go through for perhaps a century or two into the future.… Read More “The Keeper of the Book: My Childhood Dream of the Future”
Early this year a software engineer, Shaun Gilchrist, reached out to me after reading a blog post of mine from many years ago, about my informal search for hidden patterns in the prime numbers.
The Ulam Spiral revealed non-random patterns, but they didn’t quite match up.… Read More “An Interesting Pattern in the Prime Numbers: Parallax Compression”
It’s mind blowing. An object I conceived of and had made, which was in my house, that I held in my hand, and once carried in my pocket, is now orbiting the sun for millions of years, near the asteroid belt, moving faster than a bullet, in a red Tesla Roadster.… Read More “Sun Stone”
When we talk about the future of artificial intelligence (AI), the discussion often focuses on the advancements and capabilities of the technology, or even the risks and opportunities inherent in the potential cultural implications. What we frequently overlook, however, is the future of AI as a business.… Read More “The Next Step for Intelligent Virtual Assistants”
I’ve noticed a distinct change in how people use Twitter in the last year:
1. People are increasingly not using Twitter for actual two-way conversations or interactions. Instead it’s being used more for one-way “fire and forget” posting. People just post into the aether, without knowing or even caring if anyone actually reads their posts.… Read More “Twitter is No Longer a Village”
This article is part of a series of articles about the Bottlenose Public Beta launch.
Bottlenose – The Now Engine – The Web’s Collective Consciousness Just Got Smarter
How Bottlenose Could Improve the Media and Enable Smarter Collective Intelligence (you are here)
Bottlenose offers a new window into what the world is paying attention to right now, globally and locally.… Read More “How Bottlenose Could Improve the Media and Enable Smarter Collective Intelligence”
Recently, one of Twitter’s top search engineers tweeted that Twitter was set to “change search forever.” This proclamation sparked a hearty round of speculation and excitement about what was coming down the pipe for Twitter search.
The actual announcement featured the introduction of autocomplete and the ability to search within the subset of people on Twitter that you follow — both long-anticipated features.… Read More “Bottlenose – The Now Engine – The Web’s Collective Consciousness Just Got Smarter”
Today I had an interesting phone call with an alumnus of my alma mater, Oberlin College. He called me for an informational interview, asking for some career advice. It was a good conversation. At one point, on a tangent, he asked me why I went to Oberlin?… Read More “How I Got Into College (by Doing the Opposite of What I Should Have Done). An Essay.”
My father, Mayer Spivack, passed away on February 12, 2011, in the Kaplan Family House, a beautiful hospice outside of Boston. He passed away, at the young age of 74, after a difficult year and a half battle with colon cancer.… Read More “My Father and Me. A Memoir. For Mayer Spivack (1936 – 2011)”