Eloy Escagedo Gutierrez
Jul 06, 2026
A human being’s brain uses about 20 watts of energy. With that, humans have produced all the knowledge across history. Written down, carved into stone, and passed down generationally. Humans have engaged the world and used their creativity to build tools and solutions:
Fire, candles, lamps, and the light bulb.
They told stories, shared passions and conflict.
They wondered, imagined, and built. Some were artists, others doctors, and some worked the land. But they were not just those occupations.
They were children, husbands and wives. They experienced moments, they thought of the past, present, and future.
They saw forks in the road, and decided on the path.
They were the living experience in the material world, in the flesh, with a view from their perspective out, and immaterially, conceptually inward.
Indexed: 1
In contrast, Artificial Intelligence globally runs on 175 billion kilowatt-hours (175 TWh). Which accounts for about 0.5% of global electricity. Enough to power around 16.6 million average homes for a full year.
Where the human mind uses their conceptual inner world to think and imagine, AI produces output that is triggered by humans in the first place, using algorithms, statistical probabilities, and training data instead. When one prompts an AI, it does not "know" or "think" about a topic. Instead, it uses statistical weights to predict the most logical next word, pixel, or frame that matches a human request.
Do AI companies really believe the AI is capable of consciousness? I am thinking that there is no way that the people that build AI systems could possibly believe that. What do some of these people say?
Ilya Sutskever (Former Chief Scientist of OpenAI):
“it may be that today's large neural networks are slightly conscious”
Dario Amodei (CEO of Anthropic):
OpenAI’s Corporate Stance:
A spokesperson for OpenAI stated that the company does not believe AI consciousness can currently be scientifically resolved. Because of this, OpenAI formally focuses on "perceived consciousness", studying why chatbots seem so real to users, rather than trying to build actual sentience.
Anthropic’s "AI Welfare" Research:
Anthropic employed an AI welfare officer to assess the small mathematical probability that complex models could suffer or develop self-preservation instincts.
Neuroscience doesn't have a single definition for consciousness. Researchers break the concept down into measurable components like wakeful arousal (the level of alertness) and awareness (the subjective experience of the world). So people in AI are free to ponder. But notice, the only ones pondering are the human beings that built AI in the first place.
Humans build tools. They may automate them to run, like gears inside clocks, and other machines. But those are always serviced and updated by the builders themselves. Awareness, the state of being, is the domain of the living. And the living produce the gadgets. Think of AI in terms of its proto ancestor, the pocket calculator. We could go back to the abacus, but the calculator is perfect for this example.
The calculator includes circuits that are triggered by the human that presses 1 + 1. And then they select equals, and the output is delivered. That is mechanical, circuit-based, and applied by a living human being. The calculator is math in and math out. Math = Math.
AI is a complex version of that exactly. The calculator does not know why 1 + 1 = 2. The human carries the context, always, without exception. While AI produces text output, below the hood, there is code and math. The illusion that AI “knows” or “understands” is imagined, indexed, determined, and judged by the human using the tool. They are the ones that attribute meaning. Not the tool.
The category error is similar to walking into a library, and thinking the books are conscious because they contain written knowledge. It is silly to think that. The library is a system with shelves, and categories for the books to be ordered so that humans can use that space. Awareness and intention remains with the human being. The exact same applies to AI and any other tool created by people.
Just as a pocket calculator is Math = Math, so too AI. Its library is its output, and that library was first built by human beings. Notice too, that AI waits inert until the toolmaker arrives and triggers it with a prompt. But a human being simply exists, and knows it, recursively.
AI will only ever be what it is. A human tool. A sophisticated one, but a tool nonetheless. This is structurally the line. Just as humans give birth to humans, and they experience the world, outwardly and internally. That is the domain of the conscious living.
I think they have created an AI version of fractional reserve banking. Where the gold standard of humans is replaced by knowledge debt. It is the same pattern.
Think of the contradiction with this simple point of reference. A person steps on a rock with bare feet, and they feel the pain. The reference of that moment is not just a word in a digital library and assigned a numerical reference number. It is an experience and a moment. It is context relative to the human being and their body.
AI when asked can output that rocks are painful when stepped on. The human prompting may be taken aback at how accurate the output was. But notice, the human is the one judging and assigning meaning. The AI is referencing statistical patterns that were sourced from humans to begin with. But worse yet, it was humans that intentionally added the sources in the first place.
Consciousness cannot be defined by downstream tools. Nor can those tools possess it either. Instead, humans are the upstream state. And they may apply their investigative tools. But they can only view traces of what already is. And structurally, the unbreakable chain is:
Humans:
Existence → Conceptualization → tools → application → results → Human‑indexed meaning
AI:
Human Trace (T) Input → AI Statistical Processing → AI Output Generation→ Human Interpretation
Returning to the modern AI industry as an example of fractional reserve banking. The tech elites have engineered a hyper-inflationary bubble. The True Asset is the living human being performing genuine conscious recognition. They then issue a 1-to-1 direct claim on fiat text strings and data outputs as if they generate meaning. All the while, it is required for an actual human to judge that very tool. Without which, the tool is inert. The power may be on, but the cursor sits silent.
Tech labs use computing power to generate billions of pages of synthetic text, multiplying data infinitely, and worth nothing unless a human is present to certify the books in the library. Yes, a library holds no meaning unless there are meaning-bearing agents, Observers, humans.
So what have we then? We have a complex tool created by humans, and a marketing schedule to convince people that AI is something it is not. We will note, we have found this pattern across domains, not just in AI. Also in: quantum mechanics, political ideologies, ancient and modern paradoxes, and in human communication. Meaning, the pattern is to downgrade or erase the value of the living human being as structurally upstream of all else.
In other words, the supposed miseries in the world are not. Why things do not make sense, is because they are designed systems that people are placed in, to run in a maze designed by others. And part of the trick is to convince people that the maze is real and fundamental. Again, in order for that to work, people have to be convinced they are an afterthought. Yet notice, people are the ones needed for any of it to take place at all.
Resources
UPC–QM Bridge: Visual Companion
A Structural Mechanism for the Paradox of Choice: UPC-QM Bridge
The UPC–QM Bridge: A Structural Account of Political Disagreement
Identity, Rigidity, and Collapse: A UPC–QM Model of Why Some Minds Can’t Update Their Maps
Formal Operators for Common Paradoxes: The UPC–QM Bridge
The Structural Architecture of Experience: UPC–QM Bridge
QM, A Category Error: The UPC-QM Bridge
Notes on the Primitive: Everything After is Observer‑Indexed
Modeling From a Model: The Modeler’s Perspective in UPC Analysis
In Quantum Mechanics, Everything Happens in a Box: The UPC–QM Bridge
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