Some of the most innovative recent advancements in machine learning use techniques based loosely on how neural connections are formed in the brain. The field is commonly called deep learning. This is the technology behind the computer system that beat some of the world’s best at the board game Go, it is playing a large role in enabling self driving cars, and it powers many of the most effective image and voice recognition software systems. Deep learning is being utilized in a variety of industries for a variety of goals, and it’s working very well.

It’s practically an obligation to start imagining and asking the question of when these computer systems will be capable of “intelligence.” It’s natural to envision intelligence in relation to other life we can relate to. When will machines be as smart as a fly, or a lizard, or a monkey, or a human?

But it’s possible that what we create will be something very different from anything that has ever existed in the history of Earth.

It’s not just that we can’t imagine it. Human empathy is well studied by scientists. Under an MRI scan certain parts of the brain fire when people are shown images of other people in heightened emotional states. These are called mirror neurons (you should look them up if you have not heard of them). Most people also empathize with animals. Different species of animals empathize with each other. For some people empathy is even mostly (or completely) broken.

We may end up being physically incapable of empathizing with a new computer based “intelligence.” The consciousness it experiences could be so fundamentally different it won’t be like experiencing the world the way we or any other life on Earth has evolved to experience the world.

So first, what is consciousness? This question is probably way above the authors pay grade, but let’s give it a go anyways.

Our brains are amazing information pattern recognition machines. We capture photons with our eyes, we hear vibrations traveling through air, we smell particles floating in the air, we feel physical interactions with our skin, and we taste particles on our tongue. Every moment of consciousness, every thought and feeling, every idea, every habit, every smile, every joy, every sadness, every poem, every speech, every addiction, every moment of pride, sacrifice, or bravery, every cry, every second of elation, every first love, and every feeling of hopelessness, every moment spent experiencing life through all of history, for every person ever, is a complex biochemical function of raw inputs being processed.

Computer systems that are capable of capturing photons and sound waves are already old news. But we are now beginning to see computers find complex relationships in these inputs (i.e. image and speech recognition) in a similar way the human mind does using what are essentially large networks of layered self optimizing statistical distributions. It’s always interesting to hear leading researchers in machine learning, arguably some of the worlds most brilliant minds, repeatedly claim that they barely understand the systems they built.

At this moment, my fingers are moving through space after responding to electrical impulses sent from my brain to tap a key board with 30 something symbols, which I place in a specific order to represent abstract concepts that physically exist as chemical and electrical connections and flow through neural pathways inside my grey matter. And your brain is able to recognize these symbols, consume and analyze them, separate random assortments of nonsense from flowing and full fledged feasible concepts, and then continue processing to see if the concepts fit, expand, or contradict your own particular neural mappings.

This is incredible, we should all sit back and reflect on how amazing this is and how lucky we are to even exist, let alone enjoy a sunset or a book or a song.

But I imagine the way our brains work is very particular. We post process things that happen to us sometimes minutes, hours, or days later, we attach feelings to memories, our emotions alter our thoughts and our behavior, we use logical reasoning as a facade of true intention to protect our sense of identity, we at times even hide our true selves from ourselves. We are habitual, we are creative, we are creatures of culture, wisdom, kindness, and evil.

What is happiness? We describe it as feeling light, as an absence of pain, as good, as laughter, our mouths open and we expel boisterous sound from our lungs and vocal cords. What is sadness? It can feel sluggish, painful, overwhelming, our faces cringe up and salty water is expelled out of our tear ducts. How about anger? We boil, we feel rage, our muscles cells contract, blood rushes to the flesh covering our cheek bones, our optical receptors open wide, our behavior becomes aggressive.

Strong emotions cause thoughts to change, specific memories to be collected from the depths of the mind, and engrained patterns of electrochemical activity to fluctuate at different frequencies. Instead of focusing on external sensory inputs, a mind in an emotional state will highjack neural pathways and feed itself with fabricated representations of processed inputs in the form of fantasy and imagination. The mind gladly protects itself from the energy (and generally emotionally unsatisfactory conclusion) of creative thinking and the construction of new neural pathways and connections with over simplification and unwavering delusion when subject matter is complex, layered, and grey (and therefore difficult to model).

These definitions feel strange. Describing emotions is strange. Science is cold, and emotion and the feeling of being alive is, well, not cold.

How far removed is feeling light, laughter, confidence, and joy from the scientific talk of processing sensory inputs, neuro-chemical activity, and maneuvering organic limbs through space? Why are fear, anger, sadness, joy, disgust, trust, anticipation, and surprise the particular emotions, the particular states of mind, that we experience?

The scientific answer is that randomly fluctuating synthesized chemicals (with a special shout out to a certain double helix shaped molecule) interacted with external raw inputs for a long time until we became. Simple.