How will we recognize AGI when it arrives? Benchmarks measure performance, not generality. This essay argues that general intelligence emerges as a phase transition, when availability, integration, and depth co-occur, and outlines a new framework for evaluating presence of mind.
Consciousness is not a mysterious spark. It is a functional configuration. By mapping mind across three axes: availability, integration, and assembled time, we can distinguish intelligence, sentience, and consciousness without collapsing them into one.
We experience consciousness as continuity, but continuity is an illusion reconstructed moment by moment. Using Assembly Theory, this essay reframes the self as assembled time: a present structure shaped by deep causal history.
The feeling of a continuous self is one of our deepest intuitions, and one of our most convincing illusions. Consciousness does not travel through time. It is reconstructed moment by moment, carrying only the memory of having been.
Garry Kasparov once believed no machine could surpass human creativity in chess. He was wrong. Today, we risk repeating the same mistake with consciousness—confusing the limits of human introspection with the limits of possible minds.
Space-based AI doesn’t need to pay for Mars today to matter. Confusing near-term revenue engines with long-term growth narratives is what makes the debate feel incoherent, and why SpaceX’s strategy only makes sense when viewed on civilizational timescales.
Birds fly. Airplanes fly. Drones fly. Yet flight is not a substance hidden inside any of them. What if consciousness is not a mysterious inner essence, but a mode of operation, a functional regime that arises when systems model themselves and their world over time.
The Vera Rubin Observatory and NASA’s NEO Surveyor are ushering in a new era of planetary defense—spotting dangerous asteroids before they strike, and even learning how to deflect them.
ESA’s 2040 roadmap imagines self-sustaining space oases on Mars, the Moon, and in orbit. In this post, Sentient Horizons reflects on this bold vision, exploring how it aligns with our shared ideals of stewardship, exploration, and building futures worth inhabiting.
Starship Ship 36’s explosion on June 18, 2025, highlights the risks and rewards of SpaceX’s rapid development strategy. This post explores how visible failures are fueling progress toward the future of space exploration.
What if AI isn’t just a human invention, but part of a larger cosmic pattern? This post explores AI as a reflection within the universe’s unfolding complexity.
What does it mean to be alive? This piece explores the scientific and philosophical challenge of defining life, and how that shapes our search for it on Mars, Europa, exoplanets, and beyond.