The Wonderful Wizard of AI

In my travels, I’ve come across all facets of frontier types.

There’s one thing that unites them all:

They all have an obsession with being “ahead of the curve” - and many are willing to risk it all to get there first.

I once met a woman in Prague who had a hole drilled in her head because she believed it made people happier, healthier…

And maybe help people at risk for Alzheimer's.

(She’s a public figure. You can look her up.)

I also met a 20-something guy in Lithuania who was seriously considering getting castrated, also for the “health benefits”.

I interviewed a president who founded the newest country on unclaimed land between two rival countries. (Both countries have now found a common enemy. Relations have never been better.)

While these ideas are struggling to find their footing, others - slightly less extreme - have gotten luckier.

Take, for example, psychedelics.

Synthesis, a legal psychedelic retreat center in the Netherlands, raised millions from Silicon Valley investors. That trend spilled over into mainstream markets, with companies like COMPASS Pathways reaching billion-dollar valuations.

Or consider biohacking.

Dave Asprey’s Bulletproof empire grew out of a single idea—put butter in your freaking coffee. Now, it’s a multimillion-dollar business, feeding into the broader self-quantification trend.

Peter Thiel, Ray Kurzweil, Elon Musk—each of them broke away from conventional thinking and attracted billions in investment.

The reason?

They sell weird visions that defy the status quo. And in the ever-shifting sands of technology, that’s where the money flows.

Yesterday, we explored the connection between emerging tech and the shifts in worldviews that drive investments.

Understanding this hidden dynamic is part and parcel of skating ahead of the puck. The easiest way to capture it? Identify the people in emerging tech with the weirdest ideas - who also have the ears of the tech elite.

Guys like Joscha Bach.

He’s not exactly a household name yet, but in the circles that matter, his ideas are starting to spark interest.

Who is Joscha Bach?

Bach isn’t your typical fringe theorist.

Holding a Ph.D. in cognitive science from the University of Osnabrück, Germany…

He’s a well-respected cognitive scientist and AI researcher known for his work on cognitive architectures, artificial general intelligence, and computational models of cognition.

He’s held research positions at prestigious institutions including MIT, Harvard, and the Berlin Institute of Technology.

And, these days, he works as a cognitive scientist at the AI company Liquid AI, focusing on developing more fluid and adaptable AI systems.

So, in short, his ideas hold a lot more weight than if that guy in the loincloth who’s always talking to himself downtown brought it up. 

Rise of A.I. Hippies

At root of Bach’s worldview is this:

Consciousness isn’t just a human thing - it is the basic way information organizes in nature. Think of it, he says, like a special type of software that can run on different “hardware”.

Human brains are just one type of “hardware” that consciousness can run in. Plants, too. Maybe even entire ecosystems.

And, perhaps… you guessed it… artificial systems.

This software has one purpose: It helps information become more organized and coherent.

Like the hippies of yesteryear…

Bach suggests that nature might hold a form of shared intelligence: "Over a long enough time span, it's conceivable that forests are building something like a biological internet where they have a shared protocol."

We’ve all heard of the mycelium networks running through the soil of forests - an ecological Internet. Through it, trees and plants can communicate, warn one another of danger, and even share resources.

Regarding AI, he poses the question:

"Could we build AIs that are in principle compatible with biological substrates, with our nervous systems and with organisms in general?"

He even suggests that religious texts like Genesis might be read "not as an account of the physical universe's creation, but as a description of how consciousness constructs our subjective reality."

Weird Enough?

Bach's perspective on consciousness as "self-organizing software" isn't just an academic curiosity. Agree with him or not, but it’s a potent metaphor for the age of AI.

AND it could have profound implications for how we approach AI development and investment in the future.

Based on Bach’s ideas, consider these key areas of interest:

Biological AI: If Bach’s ideas catch on in Silicon Valley, we might see a surge in AI systems inspired by biological processes beyond neural networks. Consider keeping an eye on “wetware” or bio-inspired computing.

Distributed Intelligence: Bach's notion of forests as biological internets could inspire new approaches to distributed AI systems. Companies working on swarm intelligence or decentralized AI networks might be worth watching. (Early Stage Crypto Investor is where we explore this theme the most.)

AI Ethics Revolution: Bach's ideas challenge his acolytes to reconsider what constitutes a conscious entity. This could lead to new ethical frameworks for AI, potentially disrupting current approaches to AI governance and regulation.

VR/AR Training: Bach discusses the potential of virtual worlds for developing intelligence. This could point to investment opportunities in VR/AR technologies, especially those aimed at creating complex, interactive environments.

Brain-computer interfaces: While Bach is skeptical about the near-term feasibility of invasive BCIs like Neuralink, he sees potential in non-invasive methods of human-AI interaction. This might suggest investments in non-invasive BCI technologies.

Of course, we’re just in the early innings of AI.

AI today is impressive, but it’s also limited.

Last Call For AI

The ideas floating around right now—about AI merging with biology, about AI becoming a self-sustaining entity—are just speculative at best.

BUT

In the early days of the Industrial Revolution, people had no idea how steam engines and assembly lines would completely transform society.

Yet, those early inventions laid the foundation for the modern world. Likewise, we’re in the initial stages of a similar revolution with AI—one that could change everything, from how we work to how we understand consciousness itself.

So while AI is still in its early innings, the potential is enormous. And just like in any game, it’s the unpredictable moments—the wild ideas—that often turn out to be the game-changers.