"I think if we want to understand consciousness, that’s the only question to answer because certainly an AI is capable of out-thinking and it is only a matter of time. Maybe it’s already happened in terms of just information processing and computational skill. I don’t think we have any problem in designing a mind, which is at least the equal of the human mind. But in terms of what we value the most as humans, which is to say our feelings, our emotions, our sense of what the world is in a very personal way that I think means as much or more to people than their information processing. And that’s where I don’t think that AI necessarily will become conscious because I think it’s the property of life."

"Yes, but what’s noticeable doesn’t tell you how it works. I don’t have any problem with what you’re saying really, except that it’s not possible without the humans. We went from a hunter-gatherers type economy, if you like, without cities, through to cities. And as soon as we get into human evolution and culture and society and so on, then yes, there are other forms of evolution, other forms of change. But cities don’t directly propagate themselves, they propagate themselves through human societies. And human societies only exist because humans as individuals propagate themselves. So there is a hierarchy there. And without the humans in the first place, none of the rest of it exists."

"Because I think there’s some level of inevitability that a wet, rocky planet will give rise through the same processes to something very… I think this is not something I would have thought a few years ago, but working with a PhD student of mine, Stuart Harrison, he’s been thinking about the genetic code and we’ve just been publishing on that. There are patterns that he has discerned in the code that if you think about them in terms of we start with CO2 and hydrogen and these are the first steps of biochemistry, you come up with a code which is very similar to the code that we see."