Nirvanic is a Quantum-AI venture seeking to unlock the computational power of consciousness

“As a roboticist and quantum physicist, I find the brain’s computation of consciousness a miracle. What if we could harness it?”

Dr. Suzanne Gildert, CEO

Nirvanic is testing a quantum computational model of consciousness, with extraordinary application for artificial intelligence

We aim to humanize and improve the safety of AI

Nirvanic believes there’s much to be learned from natural intelligence to improve future AI systems. All life employs some level of consciousness to assess countless sensory inputs and make rapid decisions about exploration, attention and survival. We believe it does this with properties found in quantum physics: superposition, entanglement and quantum measurement.

If our conjecture is correct, we can enable a new type of artificial consciousness in AI with the safety traits necessary for working in harmony with people: intuition, empathy, judgment, nuanced reasoning and morality.

CONCIENCIA

What is consciousness?

It’s one of the greatest scientific & philosophical mysteries. From plato to einstein, we’ve asked: what are we?

Consciousness gives us instant awareness, combining our senses, thoughts, memories and feelings into a first-person experience: “you.”

Evolved over billions of years, your apex mammalian mind bio-computes this experience of reality on just 20 watts of power — the same as what a light bulb uses. It all unfurls from your DNA with less information than a Windows operating system. Life appears to have a biohack for extraordinary computation vastly beyond classical computers today.

But neither neuroscience nor classical physics can explain how or why we have this subjective, first-person experience. This has been described as the “hard problem” of consciousness by David Chalmers. Another mystery: why we feel like we have free will when most of the laws of physics are deterministic. There seems to be no role for an observer that makes a choice.

의식

Could our brains be QUANTUM?

First-person experience and free will are properties of consciousness that we can’t explain with classical physics

New models of consciousness that include quantum physics might explain consciousness. One model — the Penrose-Hameroff ORCH-OR theory — proposes that trillions of tiny cylindrical structures in neurons called microtubules have the capacity to hold quantum mechanical states.

The ORCH-OR model suggests that these states hold an enormous amount of information about perceptions and actions that are all considered at once. When the state collapses (known as a quantum wave function collapse), an optimal choice is made. We experience this process as a moment of conscious awareness.

चेतना

Conscious AI

We need AI that is conscious of humanity, with more intuition, empathy and morality

The world is demanding safer AI. But AI systems placed into unfamiliar environments often fail at their tasks, because they have never seen the situation before in their training data. They can only make decisions subconsciously, have no awareness of what they are doing, and act in a mechanistic way similar to “muscle memory” or “reflexes” in humans.

We believe that AI systems equipped with “hybrid” quantum-classical processing can enable them to be more empathetic to people, intuitive and can learn on-the-fly in unfamiliar environments. Quantum computers are now mature enough to test these ideas.

آگاهی

Follow our mission. Be profound.

“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one." — Albert Einstein

“Consciousness emerges from quantum vibrations in microtubules inside neurons, which regulate brain function and connect it to deeper orders of the universe."

— Stuart Hameroff, Anesthesiologist

“I think it’s always been the right time to build brain-based AI.”

— Jeff Hawkins, Founder of Palm Pilot