Below is an experience that led me to a greater understanding of how consciousness may have manifested through evolution. I chose to write a story (rather than an informative paper) to communicate this experience because empathy is a great communicator, and I believe this experience has an interesting perspective. For maximum enjoyment, please read the full story.

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I was headed to New York for a concert with a friend. While backing out of my driveway, my Tesla’s screen flickered — the software’s operating system had crashed. The screen was completely black; mid-drive. Surprisingly, while advanced functionality (air conditioning, autopilot, etc) was offline, the car’s core functions (pedal, brake, steering wheel) responded as expected and I was able to reverse out of my driveway safely.

I bought a Tesla because I’m a software engineer and I love the vision; self-driving cars are coming, and their manifestation will be released as small upgrades mirroring the convenience of a phone update. I’ve always been interested in technology and understand the basics of machine learning, but have only used it for very defined tasks; like predicting when and how to respond to a customer’s inquiry. I believe that full human-level conscious AI (that is, to be aware and react as efficiently as a human, or better) is far, far away and extremely unlikely during our lifetimes, due to it being complex and seemingly unaligned with business objectives (money is the API for human behavior). I believe humanity has only scratched the surface of machine-level intelligence.

Back to my trip. Once I got to the concert, I started to feel strange. I felt insanely dizzy and told my friend “I feel weird,” then collapsed to the ground. I woke up in a folding chair a few minutes later with no recollection of what had happened. The first words out of my mouth were, “I need some water.”

I had passed out (likely due to low blood pressure, I’m doing fine).

This was the first time I had ever passed out. The dizziness, the strange feeling — they were all new to me and I was astounded that when I woke up, I did not remember anything. An experience like this has never happened to me before.

“What happened?” I asked my friend.

“You’ve asked that like 5 times man, you passed out.”

I sat in the chair and sipped water while trying to comprehend what had actually happened. Everything felt fuzzy. I was still breathing. My heart was beating. I didn’t die, but I was completely ‘blank’ for the minute or so that I was unconscious. I had no memory of any feeling, vision, or dream — complete nothingness.

The next morning I went to the doctor for a check-up (conveniently scheduled the week prior) and googled as much as I could about fainting.

Fainting happens when you lose consciousness for a short amount of time because your brain isn’t getting enough oxygen (Healthline).

In other words, consciousness (awareness, and the ability to react) isn’t available when my body doesn’t have the right resources. In this case, my blood pressure was low enough that it was not supplying my brain with enough oxygen. I collapsed, fell to the ground, and let gravity help my brain regain the resources it needed. My consciousness had, quite literally, rebooted.

The following days I pondered my experience alongside the Tesla’s software crash. The two were similar:

We both lacked some resource which caused our awareness/high level functionality (consciousness-ish) to cease

We both continued our core-level functionality while higher-level function was turned off

We both resumed consciousness-ish when resources became available

I use the word ‘consciousness-ish’ to express all degrees of consciousness. Tesla, obviously, does not have anywhere near the awareness or capability to react like a human. However, to be conscious is to be able to observe, be aware, and react. Tesla has a very primitive awareness/reaction capability. There is actually an existing metric that attempts to grade consciousness called phi. Phi is meant to be a measure of integrated information.

Tesla’s ‘consciousness’ is mainly limited to its ability to be aware of/react to lane markings and other vehicles, as seen in this gif (note the changing lane markings on the screen as the car becomes aware).

This was the first time I had ever felt I shared an experience with a machine. I started comparing Tesla updates to evolution. Tesla’s updates apply more self-driving abilities; more awareness — with each update. I started thinking about how evolution may have shaped consciousness. Does consciousness exist in the body? Did consciousness arise out of biological need? Could we track the earliest organisms on Earth and their respective awareness..does awareness increase as evolution persists? How does that awareness and ability to react increase..does it have correlated benefits to each respective organism’s needs along the evolutionary chain? I’d hypothesize the answer to all of those questions is ‘yes’. Consciousness seems to be our ability to be aware and react…and both awareness and reaction (to some degree) seem to be basic biological necessities of every creature on Earth.

Does this mean that all creatures (and even plants) are conscious-ish? Probably, but that spectrum is very large, and we’re looking at it from the perspective of the most conscious being that we know of (us/humans). The degree of consciousness is likely related directly to the species’ evolutionary tract. We know animals (and plants, for that matter) aren’t out there writing books and building infrastructure, but they’re probably (at the least somewhat) aware of themselves and their surroundings; they’re aware enough to survive.

When I envision ‘consciousness’, I now see it as an operating system; where operating system is defined as the culmination of all dependencies that allow for a unique experience with my device. I’ve frequently read there is no evidence for consciousness being generated in the brain, but consciousness doesn’t seem to consist of an identifiable source, it seems to be an abstract connection between information and processes that allow a creature/thing to be aware and react. It probably manifests differently from organism to organism (ie plants do not have brains, but may be aware of themselves/their surroundings). This is very similar to our experiences with our devices. They contain all sorts of files and processes that allow us to experience the device, but that experience itself is not identifiable by one place or function. Where does my iPhone experience live? It doesn’t seem that’s the right question..it’s a culmination of parts and software that enable an abstract and unique experience. Consciousness may manifest in a similar fashion.

What’s the point of this story and why share it? There are two reasons: