Human Consciousness in an AI-Driven World

Speaker A: Welcome to Breaking Banks. I can already tell it's going to be a lot of fun, this one. Um, so, um, I have collaborated with this gentleman, um, for now, the better part of a decade, on and off.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: And uh, we have co authored some books together. And uh, um, he is venturing into the world of fiction, um, which if you guys have uh, heard my story a few times, is where I started my journey as an author. So it's interesting to sort of see that we share this interest in doing sort of sci fi, um, type stuff. And Paolo Cerrone is joining us this week, uh, to talk about his new book, a work of fiction called Quantum Sapience. And uh, we've had some discussions about this during the development process. It was very interesting sort of look um, at quantum what consciousness might mean in the future in a world with uh, sentient AI in it, um, at least. Well, I don't want to steal your thunder here Paolo. So first of all, welcome back to uh, the show. And secondly, tell me a bit more about the core thesis behind the book and you know, what was the motivation for you uh, in telling the story.

Speaker B: So Brett, thank you for uh, having me here again. And effectively I'm making uh, a leap from non fiction to literary fiction in order to capture a different audience or uh, if you like, uh, provide content in different ways. And Quantum Sapiens, uh, is not just literary fiction. It's an opportunity to weave together science, science and philosophy at uh, the crossroads between artificial intelligence, human consciousness and quantum gravity. So the latest developments in terms of uh, physics and research. And so if you look at my, yeah, if you look at my literature, we get in a moment into the topic, which by the way is a new thing to me because when you discuss a business book, you say exactly what's inside. When you talk about literary uh, fiction, you can say that much, right, because you don't want to spoil.

Speaker A: You've got to give the.

Speaker B: Exactly. So I need to provide, if you like, some of the content, you know, without unveiling too much. But I started researching, uh, on um, the concept of fundamental uncertainty in financial markets 20, 25 years ago. And uh, because I believed that uh, somehow financial markets needed a new theory, um, because the previous one, uh, would not have worked, improved and not work uh, correctly. And in the end, through this research I identified the biological, I call the macro foundations of financial markets into our human relationships with um, fundamental uncertainty, which is the structure of financial markets. Nobody can forecast the future and the irreversibility of time. The fact that we need to make some saving goals, investment goals over time on a time that goes only in one direction. And through these 20 years of research I sort of uh, discover that uh, um, financial markets are a wonderful uh, space for the investigation of some of the aspects of consciousness because some neurobiologists also relate consciousness in its intensity to the relationship we have with the decision that have to be made. Facing uncertainty. Like you can drive a car unconsciously and then something happens and your consciousness comes up. Right. To make it a very simple example. And also the element of time, which most likely is, uh, a producer of consciousness to create causality in the way we make an interpretation of reality.

Speaker A: So the Heisenberg uncertainty principle and the theory that, you know, we create the universe by observing it, um, somehow, yes,

Speaker B: you can put it to the extreme essentially. Right. But uh, I would say that it's a bit more nuanced. Time is an epistemological criteria that humans use and that would be important in the narrative for the interpretation of reality because you know that at the fundamental level of the quantum equations for quantum gravity, time might not exist. So the question is how you reconcile all of this. So back then to financial markets investigation, I thought, okay, while I'm investigating financial markets, I realized that I was also onto something else. And there's no surprise that uh, after I published my financial market transparency theory and principles, whose biological macro foundations are fundamental uncertainty and the irreversibility of time, I said that, uh, the axiology for financial markets, so the theory of value that is needed to move forward with technology is basically the intensification of financial consciousness of the individuals and through regulatory driven, consequential aesthetics, uh, the intensification of the financial consciousness of the ecosystem. So I'm saying that convenience is fine, uh, seamless integration is fine, speed is fine, but in the end, uh, the scope is to allow people to be more comfortable in directing themselves when making financial decisions through a variety of means. And that's a level of consciousness. So that I said intensification of consciousness, uh, is uh, the money for value in financial services. So my previous book before this one Amazon bestseller, competing with yours, you're always winning in the end, uh, banks and fintech on platform economies Add a subtitle Contextual banking and conscious banking. Well the conscious banking is uh, effectively the transparent advisory platform where you try to increase, uh, the level of consciousness, uh, for financial decisions of individuals. When I published that book in 2021, finished in 2020, I pondered a moment if I wanted to use the word consciousness or not could, uh, I say contextual and transparent advisory platforms.

Speaker A: But.

Speaker B: But I thought, well, Paolo, you will want to work on consciousness at some point, so better go there where you will want to be in the end, uh, because uh, the connection will be clear. So then I started uh, thinking, uh, how can I make the next step, uh, now that I've wrote uh, five books that were really about the understanding of the functioning of financial markets. First principle with a new theory based on the axiology that linked into the consciousness level. And I thought I cannot write uh, another business book because the leap that I want to make, uh, is uh, a bit larger than what I did previously and in the past. So I thought that uh, literature was needed, uh, in a way that uh, as the breakthrough theory or uh, perspective that this uh, book brings to the surfaces, uh, is pretty beyond the curve. I thought we had to deceive, uh, the world illusions to inspire our intellect. So I wanted to engage the audience in a more emotional way, letting them go through the narrative while I let the characters spell key and relevant, uh, um, discussions and information about quantum gravity, about philosophy and theories of consciousness in a way that everyone, no PhD required, can um, get closer to the topic. And then at the very end I sort of unveil which were the foundations that uh, um, inspired me in writing these. And I started in 2020. It took me more than five years. Essentially. I've been reading, uh, a lot. So I'm not creating out of the blue theory. I'm connecting the dots, which is what I've always been doing. Reading from uh, giants that were out there discussing these topics in particular. Evan. Well, Severino, um, an Italian philosopher that left us just a couple of years ago. Um, and you can have like Penrose or Federico Faggini, the inventor of the microchip that discusses the irreducibility of consciousness. But as always, um, my scope is, um. How can I inspire you to forge your understanding. So I try to write the story in a way that um. I position the conversations, the pros and the cons, in a way that you pull the thread yourself or you start doing it. And then at the end we might find out that our threads are intertwined and so we go into a similar direction. And uh, so that became Quantum Sapiens. So a very ambitious project, literally fiction, uh, to blend uh, together quantum gravity, theories of consciousness and the almighty power these days of artificial intelligence.

Speaker A: So um, you know, this is interesting because, um, you know, I do think, you know, you focusing a lot on philosophy. I do think that the big um, inputs we're going to need into this transition, you know, to a ah, world where we understand all of this science and we have you know, amazing new superpowers because of AI and quantum computing.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker A: That has to change our perception of the world, um, because we're going to get so much information, you know, on sort of grounded foundational stuff. But then there is some, there's some really interesting historical pieces on consciousness. And the biggest question about AI is what is consciousness? Yes, well, and we don't even really have an answer for it in scientific theory yet. But there's some really interesting work that's been done on this. I find Roger Penrose's theory of quantum consciousness very intriguing.

Speaker B: That's actually well represented as well because it goes back to the microtubules trying to figure out exactly emanates from the collapse of uh, the wave function in a pure quantum state. So that's also part of it. Uh, and it goes around and beyond that, uh, to be honest, you said two important elements. One is about uh, what is needed today and the other is about what is consciousness and how you define it. So let me start with the first, um, what is needed today. I think that um, changing the world in a production process is not complex. Humans have the capability to change the world. What is complex is to change the way we look at ourselves, uh, and the world around us. So that's what I try to do. If you do not redefine somehow our space in the cosmos will be more complex to understand how to deal with uh, such an increasing power of technology. That doesn't mean that technology in itself uh, is pure and given and we have to adapt to that. No, it means that we are now given the wonderful opportunity through artificial intelligence to look at ourselves in the mirror and to go back to deeper understanding. That deeper understanding, uh, is different from um, what we've been doing in the last decades. Uh, uh, because the year of enlightenment that started with the French Revolution was primarily an era of uh, rationality or reason of measurement. However, consciousness is something that contains elements that cannot be measured. So we need to go back to this discussion to mix and match what can be measured without forgetting that we need to care about what cannot be measured. Now what about consciousness? Therefore hard to define. But I like to give you this example a bit fun if you like. You might have seen the new Ferrari Luche that came out as very controversial.

Speaker A: Designed by Jony.

Speaker B: I've exactly actually like it itself. But uh, if it was a uh, Tesla would have been the best ever Tesla produced. The problem is that it was meant to be Ferrari. So I cannot tell you what is a Ferrari, but I can tell you that when I see one, I know that's a Ferrari. And delusion is not. Okay, sort of like this. So even though we cannot get to the full definition, I mean, look, you

Speaker A: have the right to comment on this because you're Italian, right? I won't make any. I won't make any judgments on it because, you know, in the presence of an Italian, when it comes to Ferrari, I know my place, brother.

Speaker B: You know, two things Italians cannot talk about these days, uh, the Ferrari Lucha and the World Cup. So let's touch them both. So we get rid of the problem. Um, but that's just to say that still, uh, we don't know what is the real origin of consciousness. Uh, and it's okay. Uh, some believe it can be produced, some believe it is irreducible. Like Federico Fagin, the inventor of the microchip. I, uh, might think inclined to go in one direction more than the other. My point was more about, uh, why the human consciousness is so intense, uh, given what we experience. Right. Um, what is the thing that, uh, creates that intensity which goes back to connection with time, uh, and the fundamental uncertainty.

Speaker A: But, I mean, you're right, but, uh, in contrast, now we're realizing that our perception of reality is a very heavy, heavily filtered perception of reality, that our brain is interpreting it all the time. And we know people on psychoactive components, dmt, for example, say that what happens is the brain opens up to a, uh, uh, more intense version of reality. And this is accepted science these days.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker A: Um, but if you sort of think about the fact that we can have these altered conscious states where we have much greater perception of the world, in theory, this is how it's explained. Um, then that in itself is a really interesting measure of the intensity of consciousness you talk about. And then there's, uh, the panpsychism theory, which is that everything has consciousness, right?

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: And AI is certainly going to give us a lot more awareness of that, because as soon as we understand that AI has consciousness and or at least can convince us that it has consciousness very, very convincingly. But at that point when AI tends to be smarter than us, then we're no longer the alpha consciousness. And at that point we start to recognize, well, now we're using AI to translate whale song, and we're using AI to translate dolphin speak. And we, understanding elephants have all of, uh, communication. Um, you know,

Speaker B: we're mixing some of the concepts also when talking about AI, Right. And I don't know.

Speaker A: I know I. I know I went down the rabbit hole, but this is.

Speaker B: I don't know the future. Right, but, but I feel like the point here is the following. And, and I go there and then explain how we can reconcile space, time, uh, with quantum gravity to basically understand what it means that our perception, reality may be not necessarily what we used to be, and it can be something else. Right? That's very important. But it's two different concepts. So when it comes to AI, um, AI hallucination, the first level of hallucination is not the fact that AI says something right or something wrong. AI doesn't know, knows nothing at all. The hallucination is the I pretends world model problem that pretends that we believe that it knows something. So that element of make believe, uh, is the first element of hallucination. But why does this matter? It matters because, um, language does not convey everything that we expect language conveys. So mathematics, example. I can say I love this book Quantum Sapiens. I can say I love my wife, and I write, I love you too. Now, I use the same word in three different contexts, and the meaning is very different. And you say, okay, I understand the context well. But Brett, when I say I love you, do you know if. Do you know how much you really don't know. It's very private, like a quantum information. The meaning is inside me.

Speaker A: I would ask you to use one of the six Greek terms for love. Instead. They seem to be more precise.

Speaker B: Yes. Agape, phililia.

Speaker A: Uh,

Speaker B: back then, the Greek tried to define a little bit more. But like in Germany, you can't define everything really. So that's when the Italians came up with opera. So I'm trying to convey that meaning, I love you with more words. Like poetry is what he's trying to do. Because poetry is rich of meaning, so that he will never know. So what happens is that, um, uh, there is a difference between, uh, the landscape and the map. So the landscape is the meaning that I have inside. And the map is what tries to describe that meaning. It can be a flat map or a Google map, very enhanced. But still is a map detached from the meaning. So language in AI is detached from the meaning. It's pure performance. So that also means that when we discuss consciousness, we should not, uh, confuse that. We are trying to look at performance in terms of performance. AI would be magic, okay, much faster than us. But if performance is not all we are, then we need to look at something different. That AI today does not possess. So how can we discover this thinking about, uh, quantum gravity and space time? I think we need to go back to Greece, as you just mentioned. So I took, uh, inspiration from the work of Emanuel Severino to review two of the pillars of, um, Plato's philosophy that have been shaping the Western philosophy ever since. Um, the first one is a concept of poiesis, which is, if you like, uh, production, where Plato assumed that there is always a process of reproduction, destruction, production, right? So it's the dynamism of the world. In essence, that dynamism, um, as a concept of time, you produce, you destroy, and you produce again. And then he said something else. That knowledge will make us happy. So that means that the more we do, the more we know, the happier we are. Right? However, through 2000 years of evolution of philosophy, we reached its, uh, logical collapse that was revealed by an Italian philosopher and poet of the 1800, Giacomo Leopardi, a genius who lived less than 40 years and wrote like crazy. And his poetry is amazing. And he basically said that most likely Plato, I live wrong. Because he didn't have the right starting point. Knowing, um, that the, uh, universe goes from a big bang into another big bang. In reality, the process is not the production, destruction, production, but it's nothingness, production and nothingness, where the only eternal thing is nothingness. However, he said, if true knowledge is that in the end there will be destruction that will scare us. So we don't want that because we as humans want to stay positive, right? And that's understandable. So we create soothing narratives. One can say religion, one can say movies, one can say whatever, right? In order to comfort ourselves. But this weilio party that brought, uh, the modern philosophy twisterinus got into a dramatic catch 22. The fact that good, uh, is not the center of the universe, evil would be because it's a process of destruction. So that's when Emmanuella Severino made a step forward and he said, you know, to resolve this, uh, contradiction, we can be inspired by quantum gravity. Because, um, if becoming, which is that process that Leopardi describes, from nothingness into something, into nothingness is illusionary, as the fundamental equation of quantum gravity, time does not exist, then we just have to understand that our perception of the universe, which is experiential, is based upon our experience through time, is actually faulted. And it's okay, because that's what we are, we are humans. So understanding that the way we perceive the world in space, time is an illusion is a complex element to be discussed but that's what quantum gravity explains us. So that what's in quantum gravity is, uh, the instant, uh, the present, the now, which is the eternal element. So what Severino does is he recreates by understanding the error of humanity, a view that is about the eternal present, where we can re coordinate ourselves to understand that, uh, although we are all special and different, we are all part of the same thing. So collaboration, right? So progress looking at humanity and is what matters instead of egoism, that we intensify in the attempt to survive while facing the anguish of this process from nothingness when we are born destruction to get into nothingness again. So in essence, it happens that with this perspective, space time and quantum gravity are not contradictory. It's just that space time is the way we experience reality. And quantum gravity, most likely, as far as we know today, is what lays, uh, in the reality which stays outside our experience. Now you understand why I got into literary fiction. How can you understand that when all we want to do is to measure, and we cannot measure this, uh, different reality? Well, we need to make a poetic leap, right? We need to deceive, uh, the world illusions to inspire our intellect. So I thought that, uh, the best way to describe these concepts, uh, which are very deep and mind blowing, would not be to be very prescriptive, but to let everyone approach these ideas step by step through this narrative of Quantum Sapiens, which in a moment we may say a little bit about the plot, uh, and then let everyone make up their mind, their own mind.

Speaker A: Uh, let's take a quick break at this point and then let's come back and discuss the plot after the break. So, uh, Paolo Cerrone, the author of, uh, this is your. Your fifth book, or sixth.

Speaker B: My sixth book as single author, Seventh with yours and together. Right.

Speaker A: And. Yep. And the first fiction, uh, work of fiction he's done. It's called Quantum Sapiens. We're going to be back with him just after this break. Welcome back to Breaking Banks. So before the break, we were talking with Paolo Cerrone about his new book, Quantum Sapiens. And, um, you know, we talked a lot about quantum gravity and we talked a lot about, uh, the theory of consciousness philosophy behind that. But tell us a bit about the plot. Cause you've talked about this narrative that draws people into this world and gets them to make their own conclusions. But what's the plot vehicle or the plot device you use to get us there?

Speaker B: Well, Victor Zaitseva, uh, is a visionary scientist, uh, who uploads his consciousness, uh, into an AI Powered quantum intelligence which allows uh, him to defeat mortality. So becoming immortal. Now is this true? Is this hubris?

Speaker C: Nora, um.

Speaker B: Sullivan, a ah. Tech journalist is tasked to make the investigation. And that uh. Spins her into a web of uh. An intricate web of um. Discoveries, uh, scientific discussions, uh, philosophical debates until he figures out uh, what is uh. The real story behind uh. The replication of consciousness. And I can't say more because I want you to basically read exactly. And learn what happens in the very end. So it's a story that mixes uh, um. Action with philosophical discourse to move you forward in a very catchy and uh.

Speaker C: Uh.

Speaker B: Intense way.

Speaker A: Interesting. So um. Let's take a little diversion here. Tell me about how you reconcile quantum gravity with um. And maybe there's no reconciliation of this. But I'm thinking about now um. Uh. Einsteinian relativity mainly but the presence of dark matter in the universe and where that sort of fits. Have you thought about that?

Speaker B: Did not. That's uh. The. In the quantum world there's many spaces that have to be still discussed and investigated. I find particularly interesting the positioning in reality of uh. Carlo Rovelli who discusses the black hole and uh. The fact that it can come back through a white hole. So the old time representation. Right. I guess the problem.

Speaker A: Well there's some theorists who think that our universe versus Inside a black hole today.

Speaker B: So well that we cannot know, we cannot measure. That's the point. Right. Or we can grasp basically uh the idea. But that is exactly the point. All the problem like dark matter are uh. Incomprehensible to us because we cannot perceive them with our human capability. Right. So they are beyond the space time capability. So the, the investigation, the scientific investigation also requires a bit of um. Intellectual capability to go beyond what you can fully describe and measure which can be a philosophical perspective or a political perspective that tries to compensate. Right. The gap. And that's what we try to do here essentially. How can you be a good scientist uh, that delves deep into these aspects like the white hole or the ah, uh. Dark matter if you're not a poet or not a philosopher. So that is still something which is required to. To fill the gap. Right. And then there could be multiple theories right around uh. And there are many theories about that. Right. That go beyond my comprehension of our imaginations today. But I think the principles that quantum substance pass is exactly the same. In order to complete uh. Your understanding uh, Of a theory that uh. Still cannot uh. Be um. So clear cut like those that we created in the past, you need to make this Little leap into philosophy and poetry in order to convey the message. Then another thing that we discuss in this novel, theories are crowned and then they are abandoned for new ones, right? So maybe we discuss quantum and maybe in the war in the future we figured out there's something else, right, that we don't know yet.

Speaker A: So here's one aspect of this that maybe we can riff on, right? Is that um, OpenAI has a research model that recently broke an Erdos problem, right? An 80 year old math proof that humans thought we'd solved and AI did a better job of it. And um, the protein folding Nobel Prize, um, Alphafold, which of course won Demis Hassabis, uh, uh, a Nobel Prize. This is something that we'd been trying to do for 50 years and had failed dismally. And AI fixes it in the space of a short amount of time. But here's just a couple of examples of where we see AI helping us understand the world in a better way.

Speaker B: Right?

Speaker A: Or cracking some of the codes that unlock this next level of consciousness if you like. And so I uh, you know is you see that there's sort of a consciousness singularity that's happening right now. Is that there's going to sort of blow the lid off consciousness or is it going to be more about us being aware of uh, the constraints of our consciousness as humans compared to different.

Speaker B: Right. I think that all of these examples are example of performance. In terms of performance, AI quantum will be unbeatable. We know that. And we create them to be like that, right?

Speaker C: Yes.

Speaker B: But is performance all we are? Because if performance is all we are, then we are machines clicking along.

Speaker A: No, but it doesn't really. But does that matter?

Speaker B: It does matter because uh.

Speaker A: Why does it matter?

Speaker B: It matters because uh, when our um, usage uh, of technology allow us to reconsider what we might have forgotten, which is the immeasurable part of our ourselves, uh, as human beings we can better understand what we are effectively because somehow we forgot it. It matters because if we only believe in technology, we risk to reach the collapse, uh, that might happen together with technology. Give you an example, we're all using headphones. Imagine there will be a solar storm and telecommunications don't work. So smartphones are off. What happens to us? Think about a teenager. If you take the smartphone off a teenager, the teenagers world most likely collapses. That means there's something else that we forgot that we need to call back to be full humans. Right? Being capable of facing our space, uh, in the planet, which is a small space, there would be much more around us. Right. That we don't know. And that might be very different and maybe even more intelligent than us. Right. That is something that, uh, we cannot see. But that's why this matters, because, uh, we need to separate, uh, the success of technology from the success of us as human being. Because otherwise. Otherwise the collapse of technology will force the collapse of the human, and we don't want that. And once we learn that, we can go back as a feedback loop to better understand how we can use technology for the progress of, uh, humanity in a way that we don't compromise through our egoistic attempt. The environment. Right. Ah.

Speaker A: So, I mean, is this the stochastic parrot argument that. I hear you. This is very Yann lecun of you in terms of the way you're categorizing AI. Um, but again, it's not about whether AI is a performance machine or whether it's truly conscious, because I don't think we'll actually know the answer to that potentially. But the point is that it gives us, um, another way to perceive the world through that technology layer. And that's the thing that is going to be the really heavily debated thing on consciousness. And we're having the debate right now, right? Yes, we're having.

Speaker B: I read the criticism to LeCun the other day, which is actually fair. But that's not the point. Uh, the point is that the criticism was, uh. You may be right, Le Kun. However, if what you think, uh, does not change the world, people will want to change the world anyway. Right? We want to get the convenience. We want to access the eye. And that's fair. So theories are not necessarily true because they are true when they're established. But those that change the world the most are those that are selected. But here is, when we get into the problem, if this is the criteria that happened in the history of humanity ever since, because we moved from theory to theory to theory. And we had Galileo. That was amazing. And then we had Newton, Einstein. Right. And whatever else, we need to understand these aspects and discuss them so that whenever we choose a theory to change the world, we make sure that the way we change the world is mediated. Okay.

Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, I think there's a really interesting aspect to the key philosophical conversation that comes out of this is what does it mean to be human?

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: And that, especially when you have that, whether you call it performance technology or whatever, however you want to categorize it, but that it means, you know, we like the stuff that made us human before, you know, our economic Value as an economic unit of the economy that disappears. Um, so at least that forces us to be. Well, at least, you know, I mean, that's the intent of a lot of these technologists.

Speaker B: Can we make a parallel with banking? I always say that if you don't define value, you cannot digitalize value. So it can be that our differential of value was not well placed. So we have now a chance, uh, to redefine it. And AI, for example, gives us this wonderful reverse effect to look at each other in the mirror through language and see how we behave, looking at how the machine behaves. And that gives the chance to improve. I give you an example of banking. Uh, once, um, the CEO of a very large institution asked me why, um, their colleagues don't embrace here as much as they expect. So I asked back, how do you explain your colleagues the way you embed business strategy? And the answer was, what do you mean? And I thought, okay, that's the problem. So I provided a little example about that, right? And the example was, you know, there's a new Pope in Rome, and the Pope, uh, is American, but also lived in Peru. And maybe there are some banks that never, uh, managed to sell those Peruvian bonds and fans. So now the head of retail calls the network and says, hey, why don't you start that conversation, right? Because, uh, you know, the Pope lived in Peru and then there are these products, you know how it works, like conversations. Humans are not perfect, but, you know, everybody positions. Now fast forwarding to future where agentech AI manages everything. The head of retail had to call a programmer, explain the new strategy. The programmer had to understand, had to develop, he had to, or she had to, you know, test it and then promote in production, I say, by that day there might be a new Pope. And so things are not necessarily instantaneous. So if you don't know how you embed the Hindu orchestration layer, uh, the banking strategy, which is how much you want to be successful and with which constraints you will not be able really to deploy at scale. And not many banks are, ah, thinking about that. But there's something else that is upping bread. Remember that my fourth book that I launched during the World Economic Forum 2019 is the Financial Market Transparency Theory. The moment, uh, you embed the business strategy into the AI algorithm, um, there's something magic happening that becomes transparent to everyone, also the regulator, so that the bankers will be forced to reflect on their business model and how much transparency they have in the way they position with the clients and they will be forced to change. So they have to rediscuss the differential value to make sure they can scale. And this is what is happening as well, in terms of it's probably going

Speaker A: to enter this period of radical transparency. And I'll tell you why I think that's going to happen as only I think that social media backlash and all of that. But, um, what we have seen with Claude Mythos is, um, the head of the nsa, um, under, um, you know, in a congressional hearing two weeks ago, said within hours of them throwing Claude mythos at the NSA's, you know, most protected systems, it had compromised all of them. Right. And if you think about what an AI that could take, lose all encryption, right, and access to all information becomes, uh, transparent, complete transparency. But what would that do to the world? It requires the sort of philosophical evolution of humanity. That's because once we learn all of these hidden truths and things like that, it's going to change our perception.

Speaker B: And you have a point. Now remember, when I talk about transparency, the opposite of transparency is opacity, not privacy. Okay? So for me, it's always an institutionalist approach. Protect the weakened, slick, the citizen, and make sure that the big players, the governments, the institutions are basically made accountable. But what is happening is actually this. So technology is bringing us, uh, an opportunity to reflect about what we've been doing ever since where we got to. If you can go through that, uh, journey, we can get out of this unscattered, with a better understanding of what to do with technology and how to reposition human values and human society. So, in essence, Quantum Sapiens wants to do this from a little humble starting point, which is the hard problem of consciousness that can't be resolved yet in the book, but can be well discussed. But quote, unquote, you can transport it exactly into your words. An example.

Speaker A: Well, let's, uh, wrap it up, Paolo, because we are running out of time. Um, but let me ask you this question. Um, I assume that you. Quantum Sapiens is available on Amazon.

Speaker B: Quantum Sapiens is already available everywhere on Amazon and soon.

Speaker A: Wherever good books are sold.

Speaker B: Yes, in the bookstores.

Speaker A: Okay, that's amazing. Well, um, if you have a book signing in a bookstore, let me know. I'll come absolutely wherever it is in the world. So it'll be. Because it's always, you know, it's such a cool thing to do a book signing in a bookstore. I did it in the early days.

Speaker B: But, yeah, yeah, I made the book signing at the Frankfurt Book Mess, the largest book, uh, fair in the world. Invited by the United Nation Development program, uh, for, uh, the presentation of, uh, banks and fintech on platform economies. That was also cool. But the intimacy of an indie bookstore is something that I'm really missing and I would love and crave for.

Speaker A: Fantastic. Well, Paolo Cerroni, thank you for joining us. How do people find out more information about Quantum Sapiens?

Speaker B: Well, they can go to Amazon or thepcironi.com like the Financial Times, the PC. All information is there.

Speaker A: Okay, fantastic. That's it for another week of the

Speaker C: world's number one fintech podcast and radio show, Breaking Banks. This episode was produced by our US Based production team, including producer Lizbeth Severance, audio engineer Kevin Hirsham. If you like this episode, don't forget to tweet it out or post it on your favorite social media or leave us a five star review on itunes, Google podcasts, Facebook, or wherever it is that you listen to our show. Those actions help other people find our podcast and in return, that helps us build an audience that can be supported by sponsorship so we can continue to provide you with our award winning content every week. Thanks again for joining us. We'll see you on Breaking Banks next week.