Dr. Joscha Bach discusses advanced AI, consciousness, and cognitive modeling. He presents consciousness as a virtual property emerging from self-organizing software patterns, challenging panpsychism and materialism. Bach introduces “Cyberanima,” reinterpreting animism through information processing, viewing spirits as self-organizing software agents. He addresses limitations of current large language models and advocates for smaller, more efficient AI models capable of reasoning from first principles. Bach describes his work with Liquid AI on novel neural network architectures for improved expressiveness and efficiency. The interview covers AI’s societal implications, including regulation challenges and impact on innovation. Bach argues for balancing oversight with technological progress, warning against overly restrictive regulations. Throughout, Bach frames consciousness, intelligence, and agency as emergent properties of complex information processing systems, proposing a computational framework for cognitive phenomena and reality.