55 - Aneil Mallavarapu: Why AI Cannot Have Consciousness

2025-07-08

Aneil Mallavarapu is a biochemist, award winning computer scientist, and Managing Partner at Humain Ventures; investing in early stage life science and health tech startups. We talk about his pioneering work in systems biology at Harvard that led to the creation of Little b, a programming language for modeling biological systems with modularity and abstraction, the phenomenology of consciousness, the “hard problem” of consciousness, taking consciousness as fundamental, the limits of radical materialism, why our brains are not...

Aneil Mallavarapu is a biochemist, award winning computer scientist, and Managing Partner at Humain Ventures; investing in early stage life science and health tech startups.

We talk about his pioneering work in systems biology at Harvard that led to the creation of Little b, a programming language for modeling biological systems with modularity and abstraction, the phenomenology of consciousness, the “hard problem” of consciousness, taking consciousness as fundamental, the limits of radical materialism, why our brains are not like classical computers, reconciling theories of consciousness with physics, the computational intractability of consciousness, the specter of AI civil rights, and Austin as the epicenter of the emerging science of the mind.

Aneil on X: https://x.com/aneilbaboo

His paper, "Programming with models: Modularity and abstraction provide powerful capabilities for systems biology"

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