Dr Rupy: Most AI researchers I think today would agree that we will at some point, you know, AIs will will achieve artificial general intelligence. They'll be as clever as us and very quickly surpass us. What they argue about is when that will happen. You know, the most optimistic will say ten, twenty years, the most pessimistic will say a thousand years. The average which the majority on the bell curve sit is probably maybe the end of this century. So we haven't got to worry about it yet, but we should we should blinking well start thinking about it seriously. You know, you do not you do not want the terminator, right?
Dr Rupy: Welcome to the Doctor's Kitchen podcast. The show about food, lifestyle, medicine and how to improve your health today. I'm Dr Rupy, your host. I'm a medical doctor, I study nutrition and I'm a firm believer in the power of food and lifestyle as medicine. Join me and my expert guests where we discuss the multiple determinants of what allows you to lead your best life.
Dr Rupy: Today I welcome the award-winning science communicator, Professor Jim Al-Khalili to the podcast. He's renowned around the world for his writing and broadcasting. He's also a leading academic making fundamental contributions to the theoretical nuclear physics and quantum biology arenas, as you'll hear, and he's also host of the long-running Life Scientific on Radio 4. Now, today's conversation isn't just complex, it is frustratingly confusing. And as you'll probably gather throughout our chat, I was pretty confused the whole way through. I I do my best to break down the science for you as we progress through our conversation, but the validating message that Jim confirms is if you're confused, you understand it. It is meant to be confusing. In today's episode, we talk about Professor Jim's upbringing in Iraq and and what led him to physics, the difference between quantum and classical systems, where quantum physics has a role in biology. We we also talk about human consciousness, artificial general intelligence, photosynthesis, a whole bunch of different arenas. What I would suggest people do before they listen to the pod, if you have time and you want to understand it fully, is do two things. Watch two things before listening to the podcast. The first is Professor Jim's Ted talk from 2015, which is all about introducing quantum biology. He does a fantastic job of of essentially defining the the areas of science that we're we're talking about. And the second thing is watch Professor Jim's explanation of the double slit experiment. If you're not aware of the double slit experiment, it is the central paradox of quantum physics. It's how atoms can behave like particles and also as a wave, and that changes depending on whether you're observing the atoms. It's it's as uncommon sense, you know, it's it is as conflicting as it sounds. It's it's the central puzzle that is infuriating physicists around the world and it is really at the heart of of quantum physics. So if you're interested in that, I would highly recommend you you you watch those videos before listening to the podcast because it's going to get confusing anyway, but I really hope we've done a job of of explaining it as we go. You can also check out Professor Jim and Professor John Joe's book, Life on the Edge, which is a fantastic historical look at how the quantum world has influenced biology and why it's so important. You'll you'll remember if if you're an avid listener to the podcast, I had a wonderful conversation with Professor John Joe, largely about antimicrobial resistance, but then it did also tail off into a whole discussion about human consciousness. And as a co-author, Professor Jim was high on my list to interview next because I'm fascinated by this subject. If you're interested in more, do reach out. I'd love to hear what you thought about this episode. You can send us a message on social media, Twitter, or via the newsletter as well. But for now, here is my conversation with the incredible Professor Jim Al-Khalili.
Dr Rupy: Jim, thank you so much for jumping on the podcast today. As you might know, we generally talk about nutrition and food and medicine and and lifestyle and stuff, but I was fascinated by the work that you've done with Professor John Joe. Um, and your wider work as well on life scientific and stuff. So I just had to get you on the pod. And I thought I knew a bit about physics until I read your book and I realised how complicated it is.
Professor Jim Al-Khalili: The point of the book is to help you understand, not make you understand less.
Dr Rupy: But it was it was really well written and and it's it's piqued my my interest even more so in the subject and I definitely want to read around it and I've watched some of your lectures as well. Um, but I thought we could start by talking a bit about um yourself and and how you got interested in physics and and how it sort of led you to this meandering path and and being such an excellent science communicator.
Professor Jim Al-Khalili: Yeah, well, I mean, I I fell in love with physics in my early teens, I guess, you know, about the age of 13 or 14. I still wanted to play professional football, I still wanted to be a rock star and all that, you know, the normal. Um, but um, yeah, I sort of realised that, you know, the big questions that, you know, lots of lots of us think about, you know, laying down looking up at the night sky, does does the universe go on forever? What are stars made of? What what's inside an atom? You know, all those big big questions. And I realised that physics was the subject I had to study if I wanted to get answers. And I happened to be, you know, I was good at maths, good at the sort of logical problem solving. And for me, physics was so much easier than the other sciences. It was easier than chemistry and biology because you didn't have to remember so much stuff. In physics, it was like puzzle solving. You know, so so because I I was just I couldn't, I was bad at history because I couldn't remember dates and names. And the same with with with. So from that point, from about 13 or 14, that's it. I wanted to do physics and and that's where my path has taken me to university, study physics and then as a a career in the subject ever since.
Dr Rupy: Brilliant, brilliant. And you you grew up in Baghdad, is that is that correct?
Professor Jim Al-Khalili: Yes, yes. Well, my my my mum's English, my dad's from Iraq. So he he'd been studying over in the UK in the 50s, studying engineering where he met my mum, married, went back to Iraq because he was in as an engineer in the Iraqi Air Force. So I was born in Baghdad. We'd come over to to the UK every two or three years summer holiday to visit my maternal grandparents. Um, but you know, English was my sort of first language. We spoke English at home, but I spoke Arabic because I went to school in Iraq until the age of 16 before we finally came over and settled permanently in the UK.
Dr Rupy: Amazing. And you already had some connections there obviously and you're a lead supporter as well.
Professor Jim Al-Khalili: Oh yeah, well, tell you what, every kid in Iraq and probably every kid in every country in the world has a favourite English football team. So clearly growing up in Iraq in the 60s and 70s, Leeds was the team to support and unfortunately, despite their fortunes sort of plummeting, I've just carried on loyal to them ever since.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, I know. I I remember I grew up uh supporting Manchester United, like a typical fair weather supporter, uh being a Londoner. Of course I supported Manchester United. And now I'm just uh I just watch the sport, um but yeah, no, it's it's interesting how everyone across the world has got a European football team that they just absolutely love.
Professor Jim Al-Khalili: Well, this wonderful story I had a a friend of mine in Iraq, he'd we lived the last few years outside of Baghdad, south of Baghdad in a small town. He'd only been to Baghdad once in his life. Um, so he'd never certainly never travelled outside of Iraq. And yet he was a big fan of Preston North End. He'd seen them on some match of the day rerun which was shown on Iraqi TV and and and that was it. It was Preston North End. You could name all their players.
Dr Rupy: That's amazing. That's so good.
Professor Jim Al-Khalili: So, um, the the book uh that you wrote, I think it was about five years ago now, um, Life on the Edge. What maybe we could start at the title and explaining what we mean by the title. I think everyone's come across, you know, living on the edge and stuff and and and the play on words there. But what do you what do you guys mean by life on the edge?
Professor Jim Al-Khalili: Right, well, what we mean is something quite specific which is not obvious just from the title. Um, so the idea is in in 20th century science, you know, the the in certainly in physics, there's this theory of quantum mechanics, which is, you know, people will have heard of and it's just very very clever and very weird and very confusing. And it's the theory that describes how atoms behave and the subatomic particles at the large Hadron collider and so on. But it's not a theory that describes our everyday world around us. Uh and so it's it's very specific to the microscopic realm. As that theory was developed in the 1920s, 1930s, at the same time, biology was going through a revolution because that's when genetics started and molecular biology. And at the time there was the thinking that, well, molecular biology, that's talking about molecules, they're pretty tiny, right? You know, they're they're sort of collections of atoms. Surely you need this new quantum theory to explain molecular biology. And it turned out they didn't need it. Uh and so the two just areas of science developed independently. It's only in recent years that we've discovered there are these certain things, mechanisms that go on inside living cells down at the scale of molecules and atoms that we seem to need the the weird, the counter-intuitive rules of quantum physics to explain them. Uh and and that led to this this new field which this book is about, quantum biology. So when we talk about life on the edge, we mean life on the edge of the boundary between normal biology, uh molecular biology that doesn't need any weirdness and some of these counter-intuitive aspects of the quantum world. It it you know, we ask the question, could could life exist even without a helping hand from quantum mechanics?
Dr Rupy: And and so am I right in saying that you've got your your classical systems, things in the in the macroscopic level, and then you have your your quantum systems where you have it at a very, very minute scale. Is that is that right? that those two different.
Professor Jim Al-Khalili: Absolutely. Um, but of course the big question is where's the boundary? You know, if you get smaller and smaller, so, you know, everyday, you know, the the physics that we do at school, you know, um springs and pendulums and balls rolling down slopes and all that business. All the stuff we see around us, even up to the very large, sending rockets to the moon and Mars, all of that requires classical physics, the physics of Isaac Newton basically. Uh, later extended with a helping hand from people like Albert Einstein, of course, but all of that is still called classical physics. You get smaller, but then you say, what do you mean by smaller? Down to the size of a pin head? No, smaller, down to the size of um a a a living a human cell, no, even smaller. And you get to the point where we we're talking about the building blocks of life, you know, DNA, um, or even, you know, um, uh viruses, you know, since a virus seem to be in the news these days, they are at a scale where if they weren't living organisms, if they were just objects in the physics lab, we'd be thinking, right, we've got to use the rules of quantum mechanics to explain how they move, how they interact with each other, what their structure is like. But because they're part of biology, we've sort of ignored quantum mechanics historically for those reasons that biologists don't learn quantum mechanics and physicists don't learn biology. Um, but it's it's that boundary is very fuzzy. It's it's it's it's it's down at what's called the nano scale. You know, we talk about things like nanotechnology, which is at the size of molecular structures, at the size of the double helix of DNA, may or may not have some interaction with the quantum world. And we feel it should.
Dr Rupy: Gotcha. So you you have your macroscopic uh classical sort of systems and then you have what would it be fair to say it's like subatomic level? Is that yeah, yeah.
Professor Jim Al-Khalili: Yeah, yeah, atoms atoms and below. So so my my background is is in nuclear physics, which is the the nucleus of the atom, which is even smaller. And that's really the playground of quantum mechanics.
Dr Rupy: Gotcha. So before we we look at how this may have an effect in in biology, um, could you give us some idea of some of the weird things that happen down at that quantum level that have been verified by some experimental data?
Professor Jim Al-Khalili: Yeah, I mean, some of it sounds so crazy that, you know, the non-scientist say, oh, come off it. So that go go back and check your sums. You know, go back and do that experiment again because this this is silly. We'd love to be able to find out why or how it's silly, but we've had quantum mechanics for for a hundred years now. In fact, the experiments that confirmed it go back even before the 1920s. Um, it started off by people doing experiments with atoms. They could start to do these very, very refined experiments looking at the the the structure of atoms. They discovered things like x-rays and radioactivity and so on, that they couldn't explain with the theories that they had at the time. And then people like Einstein and others were coming out with ideas saying, well, actually, if you explain it this way, look, the the the sums you get from your calculations, your equations on on paper match the results that you get in the experimental lab. So clearly we're on the right tracks here. But no one understood how or why. And it wasn't until the mid- late 1920s that this whole new edifice called quantum mechanics was finally complete. It does describe, it says that once you get down to this subatomic level, you can't talk about objects being, you know, atoms bumping into each other, being like tiny balls bumping into each other. Everything starts to get a bit fuzzy, a bit hazy, a bit probabilistic. You can't say, you know, the the typical subatomic particle is the electron, right? a tiny part that zips around the outside of atoms. You can't say an electron is a tiny, tiny particle. Sometimes it behaves like a cloud, like a spread out entity. And how it behaves, this is even more weird, how it behaves depends on how you look at it. So if you if you design an experiment to find out where an electron is. So you've got, let's say you've got an electron in a box. Don't don't worry about how how you capture an electron and stick it in a box and after all it's too tiny to see anyway. But ideally, you have an electron in a box. If you design some experiment to work out where it is, you could, you could pinpoint it at an exact location. But equally, you could design an experiment to work out how much energy the electron has. And you can define its energy very, very precisely. But if you do that, suddenly it spreads out to fill the whole box. It's not in a particular location. So you may have heard of something called Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, which is sort of it's a it's a term that's entered popular culture. Most people unless they're sort of aficionados, practitioners of quantum mechanics won't know what it means. But it simply means you can't pinpoint where an electron is and work out what its energy is at the same time, or work out how fast it's going at the same time. So everything at the quantum level, at the subatomic level is a bit fuzzy, is uncertain, it's it's not fixed and and precise. And that's inherent in the very nature of that the subatomic world. It's not because we don't know how to measure it or because our instruments are too clumsy and it's too tiny to to to hold in place. That's really what the world is like there. But it does mean that particles because they're spread out, you can actually talk about an electron or or an atom being in two places at the same time. You don't see it in two places at the same time. If you look, you see it in one place or the other. But before you look, you can do other experiments which confirm that it has to be in both locations at once. And that culminated in this famous um idea by the Austrian physicist Erwin Schrodinger. Uh and so so the Schrodinger's cat paradox is is famous. He said, look, if you cats are made of atoms, right? And if if atoms, you know, he's one of the founders of quantum mechanics. Yet even he himself had doubts and sleepless nights. how how the hell can it be like this? He said, stick a cat in a box. Cats are made of atoms and, you know, if if that cat could be half dead and half alive. So if you if you if you put it some poison which may or may not have been released into the box within an hour. This this by the way, this experiment was never carried out. This was just it was just a thought experiment. Um, he said, common sense would tell us that until you open the box, either the cat has been killed by the poison or the poison hasn't been released yet and the cat is alive. It's just that we don't know whether the cat is dead or alive. He said, no, but if the if you apply the rules of strict rules of quantum mechanics, that tells us the cat is both dead and alive at the same time. It's in a fuzzy in between state until you open the box and look to see and then you'll see it one way or another. So it's sort of that fuzziness doesn't disappear until we open the box. So it's ideas like that which still give even give quantum physicists like me headaches. You think, how can the world be like that? And yet, you know, we've we've had to live with it, you know, and uh, then then you've got particles very far apart from each other instantaneously communicating. That's called quantum entanglement. That was so weird that even Einstein didn't believe it. You know, he said, ah, that can't be, that can't be right, you know, go back and think about it again. But it turns out, you know, these things go on in the quantum world and we have ample evidence that they are true. In fact, the reason the sun shines is thanks to quantum mechanics. Because in the sun, hydrogen atoms are fusing together to make helium. The only way they can stick together is if they use these weird rules of quantum mechanics of being spread out objects. And so without quantum mechanics, we wouldn't be here because there would be no sun to sustain life on Earth. So it's true, if only it made sense.
Dr Rupy: Yeah. And one of those perplexing things that you you talk about and I've seen as well in in the past is um the impact of measurement and the measurement effect, I think it's called, where if you try, it's it's almost like opening the the box. The only way you can tell whether it's in one place or not is is having a look inside. But when you do have a look inside, you're in some way influencing the outcome of the experiment. And and that was demonstrated in the in the slit experiment as well, is it?
Professor Jim Al-Khalili: Yes, that's right. Yes, the the measurement problem. Well, I mean, the the problem is this, we say you can't the cat is not dead or alive until you open the box and look. But, you know, who are you? Do you have to have a PhD to do that? Do you have to be wearing a white lab coat? Can anyone look? Could another cat look? And if that's the case, why couldn't the cat in the box decide for itself? What happens if you put Erwin Schrodinger in a box with some poison, see how he likes it? Right? Do you then open the box and he says, oh, thank goodness for that. I was feeling in a bit of a dead and alive state until you opened the box and forced me to be alive. So the measurement problem comes with these philosophical issues that we're only now starting to to to appreciate exactly what what is going on. And it's still a work in progress even after a hundred years of quantum mechanics.
Dr Rupy: Okay. So, so listeners are probably have turned off by now. I'm sure that happened. They're probably at the same sort of level of confusion as me. Um, and and I I it's a very confusing topic and your book does a fantastic way of of of definitely taking us through that journey historically as well. So, um, you're at the quantum level, which is essentially what everything is made up of. Everything is, you know, made up of atoms stuck together. You get to the classical level where those weird effects don't uh occur. So entanglement, um being in a couple of places at once, etc. How can we explain why that doesn't happen at the macro level when it happens at the micro level, given that everything is made up of micro stuff?
Professor Jim Al-Khalili: Right, well, the first of all on on the issue of confusion, I have to say there's this famous quote by one of the founding fathers of quantum mechanics, Niels Bohr. He says, if you are not confused by quantum mechanics, then clearly you haven't understood it. Right? You're meant to be confused. Right? You know, so so don't feel, oh no, that doesn't make sense. I'm I'm not clever enough. No, no, no, no, clearly, you know, you are clever enough because you've realised that it is confusing. Um, yeah, so why why don't those quantum effects persist when you get large objects? Well, it's to do with the number of of particles, the number of constituents, you know, the the building blocks that make up something. When you talk about individual atoms or individual particles, they can very easily express their quantumness. They can be wavy, they can be probabilistic, they can be in two places at once and fuzzy. You build more and more and more together and all their fuzziness combines and cancels out and you get some overall averaging, some smearing out of their effects. So you don't see this fuzziness when you're talking about a ball, say. Um, a ball, football, tennis ball or whatever, is made of of trillions of building blocks of atoms. And so all of them working together don't, you know, if you think about um waves on the surface of the ocean, if you're zoomed out and you look at the the ripples on the ocean, well the ocean might look smooth from a very from from a high altitude. But you get closer, you can see the waves and they're they're behaving normally. But if you were to get down to the level of water molecules, they're all jiggling about all over the place. So the quantum effects are a bit like that. Once you zoom out and get a large number of particles, it washes out all those effects and you just don't get to see them anymore.
Dr Rupy: Okay. Okay. So I I'm sort of understanding. I'm piecing things together. How does quantum and the the um the the quantum system uh relate to biology? Uh maybe we could use an example. Um you use the example of photosynthesis. We've already talked about the sun, for example. How do we use quantum mechanics to to explain the process of photosynthesis?
Professor Jim Al-Khalili: Well, I mean, this is to some extent still a slightly controversial subject, but, you know, photosynthesis, the you know, the way that plants and and bacteria in fact use sunlight and convert it into chemical energy to to to sustain their life is a really complex process. It's a it's a biochemical process with multiple stages and lots of things happening. But it's been observed that the very earliest stage, the first step in photosynthesis, which is the sort of a chlorophyll molecules capturing sunlight, a particle of light called a photon and delivering it to the reaction center in the cell. So that bundle, that lump of energy of light energy is can then be converted into chemical energy. It can, you know, split molecules and make new ones and so on. So it's basically using it to sustain life. The delivery of that photon from the moment it's captured to the reaction center seems to be very efficient, far more efficient than you might expect. You'd think because it's got to work its way through a forest of molecules inside the cell, that it would just bump around like a like a ball in a pinball machine. You know, it could go anywhere. It it it just randomly, chances are it'll just it'll it'll not end up where it's supposed to end up. If you think about the game, what's that what's that I'm trying to think of the the the afternoon quiz game. I'm not that I watch daytime TV where they where they they drop the counters down um oh uh pointless. No, no, not pointless. No, no, no, nothing to do with that. They drop the drop the counters down and they sort of go down these pegs and then they land somewhere and then they push other um you know, coins, you know, discs over one shelf and then it's like an arcade game. That's like the yes, exactly. Yeah, yeah. Well, those counters you say, right, I'm going to do it in section three because you hope you want it to land in a certain place. Well, it may not because it's randomly bouncing off these pegs. It might land somewhere else. That's what happens to this I'm using an analogy from daytime TV quiz shows to describe quantum mechanics. Oh my, that's my career is over. Um, it it and yet that photon always almost unerringly reaches its destination. And it was discovered that what looks like is happening is that it's it's behaving quantum mechanically. Now you mentioned the the two slit experiment just now. We haven't talked about that. The basic idea is you send a particle through a screen with two slits. Um, it it should go through one slit or the other if it's going to get through. Um, and then it hits a a back a screen on the back. But what happens because it's a quantum particle, it seems to be able to go through both slits at once, like the cat being dead and alive at the same time. And and and you see what happens there, it leads to what's called an interference pattern. A bit like waves going through slits, you get light and dark fringes. Well, this photon of light seems to do the same thing. It seems to follow multiple routes simultaneously in in just such a way that the overall average is always hitting its destination and it never goes astray because quantum mechanics is helping it. I know I've not given this explanation justice, but I think any more than that would make it even more confusing.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah, no, no. I I understand that because um the there's an another uh section where you talk about hereditary uh heredity. So, um, you know, how it's possible that uh we can replicate genes with such accuracy when if you were to look at randomness, there should be much more in terms of errors, rate copying errors than than there should be. So perhaps quantum mechanics has an impact on on that as well, on replication.
Professor Jim Al-Khalili: Yes, it's possible. I mean, that's something we're looking at at the moment. In fact, what what we're looking at now with with my research group is that say, okay, well, let's say, you know, life has evolved the ability to be very accurate in replication. You know, there are enzymes in the cell, you know, proteins, large molecules, proteins that are are the molecular machines that make sure that no mistakes take place. And we said, but what if a mistake does take place and it gets through? How could that mistake happen? Could quantum mechanics play a role? So in fact, we've we we've published a paper just earlier this year showing that in the double helix structure of DNA, the the you know, the the twisted ladder, um there are particles that hold the the two strands of the DNA together. Um they're called hydrogen bonds. They're basically atoms of hydrogen. Uh and they can behave quantum mechanically. They can jump from one strand to the other in in accordance with the rules of quantum mechanics. That happens very rarely, but if it does, and then, you know, because what happens with replication of DNA is the two double helix strands unwind or unzipped, they're unzipped by an enzyme, and then they're separated and then each one makes another copy of itself. And, you know, if if everything's working fine, it makes an exact replica of the partner that it used to be linked to. But if this hydrogen atom jumps from one strand to the other just before the two unzip, then you get this this chemical bond in the wrong place. And when it starts to make a copy of itself, it doesn't make an identical copy to what happened before. So it leads to a mutation. Uh and so that's the question we're asking now, you know, we know mutations happen and thank goodness mutations, we don't want the the COVID-19 uh uh virus to to mutate. That's a bad thing. But actually, if there was no mutation at all, there'd be no evolution because we'd never change. Um and and so we know mutations happen all the time. The question we're asking now is, could sometimes, could mutations take place because of quantum mechanics allowing this particle, this atom to jump from one place to another? We're trying to do all these very sophisticated computer models to try and see, what are the chances of this happening? And if it does, is it going to get corrected? Is it going to get is that an error that's going to get picked up? So, oh no, you don't, you're in the wrong place. Or does it just go through the process and then, you know, become a mutation further down the line?
Dr Rupy: Or or to add another dimension, would it be something that might be advantageous to the the host if there was a mutation that actually provided some sort of uh, you know, physical phenotypic advantage?
Professor Jim Al-Khalili: Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, you know, we we talk about the coronavirus mutating and that's a bad thing. Well, for the virus itself, it's a good thing, you know, survival of the fittest. And so the reason a mutation becomes, you know, like we talk about the Delta variant of of of the COVID virus uh spreading, that's because that mutation is better at at um being transmitted from from one person to another. So that was because of a mutation. You know, it didn't know if I if I mutate this way, that's going to give me an advantage. Come on guys, let's all mutate. It just happened randomly by accident, and then that new mutation suddenly discovered that it was more successful at transmitting. So it becomes the the the dominant type. So mutations, if they're not advantageous, they won't survive. They're not the fittest to survive. The the ones that do survive are the ones that do infer some sort of advantage on on their on their host organism.
Dr Rupy: Yeah. And it's almost like this combination of like um Lamarckian theory and Darwinianism. So or you know, neo-Darwinianism. So where you have um some advantages that are conferred to the host and some that are are bred out. Um but there's also there seems to be like a a thread um of heredity that is being potentially uh um processed by quantum mechanics.
Professor Jim Al-Khalili: It it's possible. Yes. I mean, we know that mutations uh uh take place for all sorts of reasons. You know, just ionizing radiation that we know that is bombarding all life in the biosphere constantly. Um, if that radiation, you know, hits a cell, it can damage the DNA and that can lead to a mutation. And and as you said earlier, you know, copying errors take place. It's you know, the fidelity is not 100% all the time. So there are reasons ways why mutations take place all the time. The question we're asking is, this quantum effect, this so-called quantum tunneling of this hydrogen atom from one DNA strand to the other, um, is it important? We think it takes place. The question is, is it in the noise or does it really make up a significant um probability of happening, uh you know, as part of other forms of mutation? If so, well, it's interesting to know. Maybe we could do something about it. You know, maybe we could it could be controlled in some way.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah. Um, obviously, I'm not referring to some of the conspiracy theories that came out last year on the the height of the um uh coronavirus with 5G and and and all that kind of stuff. But um, are there any uh concerns with urban uh electromagnetic fields and that having an impact on people's health at all? Is that something that you've come across uh as a
Professor Jim Al-Khalili: I I've come across it, but it's not something that, you know, the sums simply don't add up. Uh it you know, the numbers, you know, it's just impossible for that to have a major effect on on on the cellular environment. We do know that, you know, there are um there are creatures, you know, um animals that can sense the Earth's magnetic field and they use that for for navigation. You know, certain birds when they migrate, certain insects, certain marine mammals. So we know that the Earth's magnetic field can have some influence on the chemistry inside living organisms. And that even that is not very well understood, even though it's been known for a few decades. But the and so we know that electromagnetic fields can have an influence. After all, you know, you stick a body in an MRI scanner, that's you know, that's a very powerful magnetic field that affects the body, otherwise you wouldn't get get an image. Um, but the notion that it can lead to mutations, that simply doesn't make logical sense because it would have to be able to be so focused. You can't cause a mutation, you can damage a cell, you know, if you you you if you sit inside a very powerful magnetic field, then that's that could be dangerous. Um, but it's not going to cause individual particles to to to to jump from one place to another or or mutate. And certainly sitting in, you know, sort of I know that people are still thinking looking at, you know, effects of over use of mobile phones and things like that. But I I've not seen any any numbers, any serious modeling calculations where someone said, yeah, that's a strong enough magnetic field to actually cause harm.
Dr Rupy: Okay. Um, that's that's great to know as well because I I I I'm constantly asked about it, but I don't think uh I've ever come across anything definitive that suggests that utilizing those devices or being or being uh exposed to background um urban electromagnetic fields have a detrimental effect. Um, talking about electromagnetic fields, uh I guess we should we should talk about human consciousness. Uh and uh again, yet another frustrating field of of what how how on earth is it that we are self-aware, that we uh can formalize thoughts, um, where where are we up to at this point?
Professor Jim Al-Khalili: Where are we up to? We we still find consciousness mysterious. I mean, certainly my my colleague, um, John Joe McFadden, who's a molecular geneticist at Surrey, you say you had him on on the podcast last year, he's in fact, he's published recently a couple of papers on the effects of or the electromagnetic field of the brain. You know, that you know, our brain works by firing neurons. These are electrical signals and therefore by definition there's an electromagnetic field associated with the brain. Whether or not that's connected to consciousness is a is a hugely speculative area. I mean, a lot of people have have have suggested, well, you know, quantum mechanics may be maybe the consciousness is quantum. And I can see why that is an attractive proposition. But my answer is always the same. Look, quantum mechanics is mysterious and we don't understand it. Consciousness is mysterious and we don't understand it. That does not mean the two have to be connected to each other. Um, you know, and I think, you know, where the the advances that are being made in consciousness studies are by people working in neuroscience, artificial intelligence. Uh there's a there's a a good friend of mine, a colleague of mine at Sussex University, um uh who who who who is running a group uh Anil Seth, his name is. And and Anil's running this um group in in neuroscience studying the nature of consciousness. And I think we're starting to to make some some progress in understanding what is the meaning of self, you know, what it we don't think consciousness is something other than what's in the brain. It's not like, you know, you have your gray matter, it's just just you know, chemistry and then you sprinkle pixie dust and suddenly you become self-aware. And you know, I'm not a religious person, so I don't believe in, you know, the mind body problem. I don't think there's a soul or something like that, a seat of consciousness. It's just a problem that has has been going for so long. You know, philosophers are still asking the question about the nature of free will. Are we just machines, you know, or do we have the ability to make decisions? Of course, we feel as though we have decisions, you know, we can make decisions freely ourselves. But is it all just is it all just atoms bumping into each other at the end of the day? And if it isn't, what else is it? You know, what is beyond just the, you know, we we are more than just complicated computers. We know that. So what is the difference? What is the difference between animate matter, a living organism, and inanimate matter of the equivalent complexity? So what's the difference between a live mouse and a recently deceased mouse? They're both made of the same atoms and molecules, you know, combined in the same complex structure, but in one case it's alive and one case it's dead. What is that difference? It's not magic. It's not the spark of life issue that vitalism that scientists used to think 200 years ago. Well, that's we know that's not the case. You know, we should be able to explain life. Biologists, I don't know if they they they like this or not, but we should be able to explain biology using the laws of physics and chemistry. Because what else is there? It just may be that it just may be that those laws of physics and chemistry that explain life, we have yet to properly understand. But it can't, what else could it be?
Dr Rupy: So yeah, the way you you've talked about it in the in the book and I've heard um John Joe talk about it before is you have all these billions of of connections, like the worldwide web, for example. Um, and just because you have all those connections doesn't necessarily give rise to life or or thought or self-awareness. So how is that different to the fleshy bits that we have in our skull that that emit energy that we can measure with EEGs? Like what where is the where is the the difference there? Um, and and can you measure sparks of consciousness? I mean, we we know the difference between asynchronous and synchronous firing when you measure EEGs and you you can get people to do tasks and stuff. But um, is is that the the current theory around where consciousness uh arises, that the energy as as the production of of of those neurons firing?
Professor Jim Al-Khalili: Yes, um, or or the way they're connected up in in neural nets. I mean, we we don't think that uh it it should be possible to build a conscious mind out of something other than biological building blocks. You know, a a computer could be conscious. There's no there's no um reason, there's no laws of science that tell you it can't. It it it we still believe it is a matter of complexity, of emergence. At the moment, our our our best artificial intelligence, they can beat us at chess, but that's pretty sort of mechanical, you know, if this then that sort of thing. And they are starting to start, you know, um the the very advanced AIs that were that are being developed today are starting to show signs of original sort of creativity in a sense. They're able to to to to to generate music, to generate art, to to find to to find patterns that, you know, we find difficult to find. But it's still at a rudimentary level. We just, you know, my view is this is what's called strong AI, I think, the idea that there's no um sort of hard and fast rule that says a machine couldn't one day think, be conscious, be self-aware. It's just that we're a very long way away from that because we don't think there's anything, you know, whether it's energy, whether it's whether it's um the the neural net connections of neurons in in the brain, whatever, it's so complex that that that consciousness is an emergent feature of the brain. You know, we're conscious, a cat is less conscious, um um an ant is less conscious. Uh, you know, consciousness isn't a switch that's on or off. It's a it's a dimmer switch. You know, it can be made brighter or or dimmer depending on the complexity of the structure of the brain. But how it emerges, what it how it originates, that is something we still don't understand. That's still one of the big mysteries of science.
Dr Rupy: So, yeah, I I understand that to an extent actually. So the the more neural connections you have, the more the more firing you have, um, the more likely you are to have this uh emergent ability to, you know, create original thought. And that's why you have a hierarchy of animals and we can create rudimentary tools, we can create computers, or not me personally, but you know, generally what that's that's sort of the hierarchy of things. But given the way technology is is growing exponentially, I mean, you mentioned you have we have computers that can beat us at chess, we also have those that can beat us at Go now, which is a far more complicated game and then, you know, it's going to get more and more over the next 100, 200 years. Just because you have more connections, does that suddenly mean that you're going to that consciousness is going to develop or does it require something else? Because I the way I see it is that the more connection doesn't necessarily mean suddenly consciousness sparks.
Professor Jim Al-Khalili: No, I I I don't think consciousness will will spark. There isn't a point at which you can say this computer or this AI algorithm is now self-aware. It's a very it's a it's a smooth transition. You know, the very early AIs that um um organizations like Deep Mind that that developed the the AI that beat the best the world master at the Chinese game of Go. Um, they started those AIs practicing them on 1980s Atari video games. Uh and and and there's this wonderful that they, you know, I did a TV documentary about this two or three years ago where so I went and and filmed there and I was talking to them. They had this the game breakout where you've got um a brick wall at the top of the screen and and with a paddle you're sort of bouncing the ball that knocks away the bricks. Well, this AI, I mean, I'm I'm it figured out that if it aimed the ball at the corner, it could keep breaking, breaking, breaking it until it could get behind the wall. And then it's bouncing up and down on the wall and it's much more efficient at removing it more quickly. And once it did that by accident and it worked, it learned that that was the way to do it. And then every time you run it, it would it would do that because it it, you know, that's started to be what's called machine learning. It it's built into it that this is a more efficient way. So that's a very first rudimentary step of seeing a problem, finding a way of solving it and learning from that. It's that that trick wasn't programmed into the AI by a human. The the human programmer just said, there's a wall, bounce this ball until you knock away all the bricks of the wall, rewards for doing it more quickly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. So so I think the consciousness is something that will gradually, gradually emerge. It's not that you get to a certain point and say, well, this is as far as we can go with complexity, we need an extra ingredient now, the magic pixie dust to make it self-aware, make it conscious. I don't think that is the case. I think that is something that just will gradually emerge when something becomes complex enough.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah. It's super interesting because the I think because it's perhaps my rudimentary mind, it's almost like when you when you give a computer a task like uh breakout where you you're trying to uh um break as many bricks as you can with uh minimal touches on the paddle. Um then the computer will reward itself for those behaviors. So, okay, when I hit it in this direction, I got 100 bricks versus two bricks if I did another way. So ergo, I'm going to carry on doing that because you've given it a task to complete. And the same thing with, you know, games and and all the rest of it. Um but the jump from that to uh artificial general intelligence where they decide to play a completely different game, uh you know, that that's that's like a a shift.
Professor Jim Al-Khalili: It's a huge jump. It's a huge jump, but I think that's because it's it it we shouldn't see it as a jump. We should see it as a very long way down a road which we have to go. It's a continuum. You know, it's a bit like, you know, people were were didn't like evolution theory because uh, you know, the missing link and how can you go from this, you know, to us? So, well, because it's a gradual thing, you know, we evolved slowly and and complexity builds up. I think with consciousness, we're going to find that it's a similar sort of thing. It doesn't it doesn't suddenly uh you don't suddenly get to artificial general intelligence where they're thinking in the same way that, you know, we think. But you can always imagine them um, you know, reaching a point that's the same as some simple insect that uh you know, that that if this then that, if this happens, I've got to go and find food over there. If that prey comes, I I disappear. It's genetically sort of built in that it has to follow certain procedures. Um, you can imagine an artificial intelligence reaching that stage. Well, if it can reach that stage, after all, the worm and the insect are part of the tree of life and there's nothing magical that happened between them and us, just a long time, then then I think it's a similar sort of similar sort of argument.
Dr Rupy: Yeah. So it's just basically the time is is the only limiting factor to to what we're
Professor Jim Al-Khalili: And and we and and and most AI researchers I think today would agree that we will at some point, you know, AIs will will achieve artificial general intelligence. They'll be as clever as us and very quickly surpass us. What they argue about is when that will happen. Uh you know, the most optimistic will say 10, 20 years, the most pessimistic will say a thousand years. Uh the average which the majority on the bell curve sit is probably maybe the end of this century. So we haven't got to worry about it yet, but we should we should blinking well start thinking about it seriously. You know, you do not you do not want the terminator, right?
Dr Rupy: Well, yeah, exactly. everyone just thinks of the terminator because like we're we're so inefficient. We we take up all the resources. You know, if we if we're programming for a healthier, cleaner society, then the the the obvious option is to to get rid of the polluting humans. And that that's where you get the idea of the terminator. And you know, I I'm thinking about it through the the lens of a physician. So already we're seeing AI in so many different ways. So pattern recognition, looking at MRI scans when I'm in A&E, for example, that would be incredible, you know, to have something that is almost like a fact checker. Um, we we see it in skin uh pattern um uh consumable tools that people can take pictures of their moles. So I as a GP don't have to look all over their body, you know, get them in every three or six months. And then we're also seeing it in logistics as well, where we can actually pattern recognize so that we can predict when your ECG machine needs new paper or needs maintenance or your endoscopes prevent them from breaking down. What what I what I'm um, I wouldn't say I'm concerned about, but what I'm um I'm very interested in to to see is whether computers can actually take over the role of a of a physician. What what do you think about that?
Professor Jim Al-Khalili: I think there's a huge ethical mind field. Um, you know, the similar example is with driverless cars. You know, if we can have driverless cars that can, you know, they scan the road, they know what's happening, they're very safe. As soon as a driverless car runs someone over, there'd be an outcry. The fact that they might have reduced road accidents by 90 plus percent, we tend to ignore. Well, it's okay, you know, for for a human to to to run someone over. It's human error, you know. But don't get a machine to do it because, you know, somehow it's it's different. So I think we do have this concern that AIs, we don't want it to take over because it you know, you lose the human touch. It's almost a it's a it's a sort of somewhat illogical really to to to to to think about it in that way. But I mean, to give you an example, very recently, I remember hearing a talk from Zan van Tolken, the van Tolken twins. Zan was at the at the um the science festival um and he was talking about um I don't know what I think it was part of a BBC Horizon that that he presented a few years ago. But there was there was a study in America where they're looking at people who um attempt to take their lives uh and and and and don't succeed. And of course, then they go to therapy or they go they go to their doctor and you know, how do you as a as as as a physician or a psychiatrist predict the likelihood that they will try and try again to take their lives. You know, and you've got to take into account their state of mind, their environment, you know, their their medical history and and and so on. They they developed this AI system that could take in so many of these factors so quickly and and and and analyze them so much more carefully than a human could and it reduced the the uh um probability of reattempting to many of these patients reattempting to take their lives by a huge amount. So it was saving lives. And yet, you know, understandably, we feel very uncomfortable having a computer decide on whether to section someone or whether to say, no, you can go back home, you're you're okay, sort of thing. You know, so that's those sort of decisions about about we don't we're not we're a long way from from being ready to hand over responsibility for our health, for our lives, the lives of our loved ones to a machine. You know, even even though logically, it's it's it's much more reliable than a human.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah. And I think this is a generational thing because the the more I see, I don't know what they're called now, is it Gen Z? I don't know. I'm I'm I'm still a boomer, so I've got no idea. I just scraped into the millennial bracket, so I'm I'm going to keep to that. So, um, I mean, I I I I witness uh, you know, um these these young people coming in on their phones, that everything they know is uh through the medium of the internet, particularly uh over the last year and a half as well. So I think we're we're naturalizing into an environment where computers play a huge, huge role. Um, and some people that I've spoken to would feel quite um comfortable with having a a diagnostic tool that is powered by AI. And I I think there's going to be almost like a transition period where we use computers almost like an Iron Man suit where, you know, it can help me better detect someone's uh blood results if it's reviewed and then I also do another pass through the results as well and deliver the results with with that sort of added security. And then maybe at some point down the line, there will be a complete takeover almost.
Professor Jim Al-Khalili: Yeah. I know, I think I think absolutely that's what's happening. And in surgery as well, sort of robotic, you know, AIs controlling robotic surgery procedure, but you need a human there, you want a human there at the same time. But you know, you're right, you know, we're already used to AIs on Netflix telling us what what film we probably want to watch next. You think, oh, yes, it was it scanned it scanned my uh viewing history and decided these are the sorts of films I like and sure enough. You know, so we we are starting to take these AIs that are chugging away in the background, whether it's social media, whether it's um um something on the internet, uh whether it's to do with, you know, health and medicine. And it's it's happening and it's remarkable how quickly we, you know, even those who haven't grown up in in in the the internet generation, it's remarkable how quickly people do just accept these new technologies that are coming at us so quickly. You know, who who who'd have thought 20 years ago we'd be walking around with iPhones now, you know, already in the last decade or less, you know, it's become normal that we we've got a pocket supercomputer that used to be just in, you know, you could only see it in Star Trek.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah. And I think, you know, with the with things like Neurolink and and all the other uh products that uh people are thinking about in terms of inserting the the internet and having the capabilities of all that knowledge. I mean, it's it's exciting and uh and scary.
Professor Jim Al-Khalili: And scary. And yeah, but but but again, you know, it's it's it's a progression from, you know, wearing glasses. I'm I'm this is technology to enhance my my my natural, you know, physical abilities. Um, you know, so or or, you know, if you have a replacement hip or knee, you know, that you've done something intervention. So why not intervene somewhere in in in the brain? That's part of your body as well. It's just that it's, you know, these things always take some time to for us to sort of get used to and think, no, okay, no, that's fine. I'm used to it now. It's okay.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah. I mean, having a pocket computer, I mean, everyone's got access to the internet right now and it's just a very short jump to, okay, well, I'm going to stick it in my glasses. Yeah, I'm just put it in my head and that now I can just and then the communication as well. I mean, it's yeah. Um, talking about the future. So you're you're you're still very much involved in uh academia. I mean, you've got a student uh coming on after this that you're going to be having a chat with. Um, what what are you working on now?
Professor Jim Al-Khalili: Well, um, I've got a number of PhDs. So about, you know, 5 to 10 years ago, I really thought my my my days of doing academic research in theoretical physics were sort of coming to an end because I was doing a lot of TV work, um, radio work and and you know, sort of acting as a sort of science communicator. I still teach. I was I mean, I've I've taught undergraduate physics students at the University of Surrey now for an unbroken stretch of 29 years. You know, normally academics take these sabbaticals every few years, right? To go off and take a break. But my life has been a sabbatical because I, you know, I I teach, but I go off gallivanting to to do documentaries and so on. So I haven't felt the need to to for that break. But in recent years, I've I've I've got back more in in involved in research. And and quantum biology, the subject of the book that I wrote with John Joe McFadden, Life on the Edge, is very much our our area of research. And actually, as we're recording this this podcast, even though I you know, it won't go out just yet, but as of now in in mid June, uh we I've just been awarded a large research grant uh from an American charity worth $3 million to to to work on exactly the stuff that we're talking about. What is the connection between the quantum world and the classical world? How does the quantum become classical? What is the what's the nature of measurement? What is the nature of time? I mean, that's the the the title of the project is the arrow of time. You know, we are conscious of past as being distinct from future. There's an asymmetry there, you know, time is not reversible. In space, things are reversible. I can walk from A to B, but I can get back from B to A. But I can't go from today to tomorrow and then come back to today again. So where does that irreversibility of time come from, given that at the fundamental level, the laws of physics don't have an arrow of time. Everything is reversible. Uh and so this is a big grant which involves multiple institutions. Surrey is leading it, but we have, you know, Oxford and Bristol in the UK, three universities in the US, UCLA, UC San Diego, um Arizona State. We have physicists, chemists, mathematicians, philosophers, uh um, you know, all all looking at different aspects of how the quantum world becomes the classical world and what its implications are to life and and and the nature of time. You know, so exciting stuff. I I I suspect I'm going to be very because I'm because I'm leading on it, that also means I've got a big admin responsibility as well. So so I suspect, you know, whether I'll have time to to, you know, go off as and when I want is probably, you know, less likely over the coming years. But push comes to shove, that is my my job. I know, you know, a lot of people know me say from presenting the life scientific on Radio 4, but actually the day job is as a quantum physicist. So I'll carry on doing the radio stuff, but I'm also doing my research.
Dr Rupy: That sounds amazing. I can totally see a documentary coming out of this as well, particularly just with that roster of all the different philosophers.
Professor Jim Al-Khalili: We've sort of half promised the charity who's funding this because they said, what's going to come out of it? And there's a big outreach um part to the research. Uh and I I've sort of hinted that, you know, um I know a few exec producers for TV who would who would um put a proposal together to turn this into a documentary. Who who funds it is another matter. Maybe Netflix or Amazon Prime or you know, since they've got more money than the BBC.
Dr Rupy: Yeah. I know. I I I would say and I would love to watch it being uh done in in live as well, like building this in public, you know, going through the whole thing and and you know, doing a YouTube channel of it and actually uh doing like weekly or monthly stints where you're like, this is where we're at at the moment, this is the next step, you know. I think that would be fascinating.
Professor Jim Al-Khalili: Good idea. I'll I'll I'll take that. I'm just write that that down. That's a good idea.
Dr Rupy: Please do that. Honestly, I would love that. I think I think building in public these days is uh is the new medium because we're very um we're quite voyeuristic, I think as as humans. We we love that's why like social media and Instagram stories and all that kind of stuff has taken off because we and inherently so curious about how how other people do things, how other people live. And I think with a project like that, it would be incredible to see the journey unfold and I think you'd see a lot of people interested.
Professor Jim Al-Khalili: Yeah. Definitely worth thinking about. Thank you.
Dr Rupy: Awesome. Well, this has been fascinating. Thank you so much um for for taking time out your busy schedule. Um, like I said, I I I listened to Radio 4. It's uh I've watched uh your Ted talk and some of the uh the lectures that you've given at the Royal Institute as well. They're absolutely fascinating. Um, and it's uh yeah, it's been it's been brilliant.
Professor Jim Al-Khalili: Thank you very much. I've enjoyed the chat.
Dr Rupy: Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. Like I said at the start, if you want to learn a bit more about quantum biology, do check out the links on the show notes, the doctorskitchen.com. You've got all the links to the YouTube videos that I discussed at the start, the double slit experiment as well as Professor Jim's Ted talk, which is all about quantum biology and why it's so important. Do check out the Life Scientific and I cannot wait for hopefully a Netflix documentary about Professor Jim's next project for which he's got grant funding. It sounds absolutely amazing. I'll see you here next time.
