Forty-three years before concerns about artificial intelligence (AI) and the nature of consciousness dominated the news cycle with the launch of ChatGPT in 2022, and 26 years before Ray Kurzweil wrote The Singularity is Near, Douglas Hofstadter posited that human cognition could be understood through a formal set of mathematical systems in his work Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid. However, as AI became singularly focused on accomplishing tasks, Hofstadter grew obsolete in the field.

This was partially intentional. Hofstadter distinguishes his focus on consciousness from AI models, or what Hofstadter calls “machine learning.” He is skeptical about the ability of AI to match human cognition, something he views as far more complex, creative, and collaborative than the prescriptive models generated thus far.

Hofstadter argues for the role of experience in consciousness, and he uses himself as a subject of study. While traveling across the continent as a doctoral student, Hofstadter found himself repeatedly getting lost thinking about thinking itself. It is a practice he never gave up. The scientist continues to fill journals with documentation of his own mental fumbles and malaphors, the accidental blending of two idioms such as “It’s not rocket surgery.” Hofstadter insists there is significance in the data of his own human errors.