--- title: "Former Facebook Exec Says AI Will Soon Simulate the Human Brain" description: "John Carmack — Doom creator, father of virtual reality, and former Meta employee — believes that we're on the cusp of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)." date: "2023-02-08" modified: "2023-02-08" authors: - name: "Maggie Harrison Dupré" job_title: "Senior Staff Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/mharrison" url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/facebook-john-carmack-ai-will-simulate-human-brain" categories: - "Artificial Intelligence" - "Brain" - "Health & Medicine" tags: - "agi" - "ai" - "artificial general intelligence" - "the digest" --- # Former Facebook Exec Says AI Will Soon Simulate the Human Brain ![John Carmack — Doom creator, father of virtual reality, and former Meta employee — believes that we're on the cusp of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).]() *\Image: Getty / Futurism\* ## Emulator Gator John Carmack — Doom creator, father of virtual reality, and [premier disgruntled Meta employee]() — believes humanity is on the cusp of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). "I think that, almost certainly, the tools that we've got from deep learning in this last decade," the famed programmer [told *Dallas Innovates*](), "we'll be able to ride those to artificial general intelligence." As far as how to get there? All we have to do is figure out a little thing called "consciousness," and we'll be simulating the human brain in no time. "The thing we don't yet have is sort of the consciousness, the associative memory, the things that have a life and goals and planning," Carmack continued. "I mean, forget human brains; we don't even have things that can act like a mouse or a cat." "But it feels like we are within striking distance," he added, "of all those things." ## Murky and Cloudy To Carmack's credit, artificial intelligence has come a very long way in the last decade, and the current AI tools are impressive enough — a "revolution" that he attributes to deep learning and deep connectionist AI models. Still, that consciousness "thing" that Carmack says the field is lacking — or machine sentience, or whatever you want to call it — is also a main point of contention within the industry and beyond. Yes, it's certainly missing from existing AI products, but it's also difficult to lay out any kind of roadmap for reaching consciousness-infused AGI when no one really knows are agrees on what it would look like. And while Carmack didn't offer *Dallas Innovates* a solid definition of machine consciousness himself, he mainly seems to think that speed of innovation begets speed of innovation. A because-we've-gotten-this-far-of-course-we'll-get-that-far sort of thing. (Other deep learning experts [might agree](), while others, like Google's François Chollet, think of AGI as a [pipe dream]().) "What I keep saying is that as soon as you're at the point where you have the equivalent of a toddler — something that is a being, it's conscious, it's not Einstein, it can't even do multiplication — if you've got a creature that can learn, you can interact with and teach it things on some level," Carmack said in the interview. "And at that point, you can deploy an army of engineers, developmental psychologists, and scientists to study things. Because we don't have that yet, we don't have the ability to simulate something that's a being like that." "I do consider it essentially inevitable," he added. **READ MORE:** [*Exclusive Q&A: John Carmack's 'Different Path' to Artificial General Intelligence*]() \[*Dallas Innovates*\] **More on John Carmack:** [*John Carmack Quits Job Building Metaverse, Blasts Facebook*]() ## Author At Futurism, I've reported extensively on the rise of AI as a cultural and business force shaping the media industry, and more broadly how those dynamics are changing how we all consume and share information and relate to one another. I'm also fascinated by public health policy and ethics, the role of emerging tech in politics and governance — and the powerful people and forces at those intersections — climate change, and the environment. My investigation on Sports Illustrated's use of AI-generated authors with fictional biographies won a 2024 Mirror Award for "Best Story on Media Coverage of Artificial Intelligence in Journalism and the Media" from Syracuse University's SI Newhouse School, I contributed to Niemen Lab's 2025 Predictions for Journalism series, and I've discussed my work for Futurism during appearances on NPR, CNN, the BBC, the CBC, and more. I grew up in rural Pennsylvania and attended the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where I played Division I field hockey for the Minutewomen as a midfielder. Since then, I've lived in New Orleans, Louisiana and Manhattan, New York. I spend my free time running, reading, perusing archival fashion, and searching for the world’s best negroni. I also have a debonair tuxedo cat, Westley, who's named after "The Princess Bride." ### Author social links [Bluesky]()