With the rapid development of chatbots and other AI systems, questions about whether they will ever gain true understanding, become conscious, or even develop a feeling agency have become more pressing. When it comes to making sense of these qualities in humans, our ability for counterfactual thinking is key. The existence of alternative worlds where things happen differently, however, is not just an exercise in imagination – it’s a key prediction of quantum mechanics. Perhaps our brains are able to ponder how things could have been because in essence they are quantum computers, accessing information from alternative worlds, argues Tim Palmer. Ask a chatbot “How many prime numbers are there?”[i] and it will surely tell you that there are an infinite number. Ask the chatbot “How do we know?” and it will reply that there are many ways to show this, the original going b…
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