A brain-sized artificial consciousness could have millions of times more experiences than us per second, since electromagnetic signals travel at the speed of light—millions of times faster than neuron signals.
However, the larger the AI, the slower its global thoughts must be to allow information time to flow between all its parts. We’d therefore expect an Earth-sized “Gaia” AI to have only about ten conscious experiences per second, like a human, and a galaxy-sized AI could have only one global thought every 100,000 years or so—so no more than about a hundred experiences during the entire history of our Universe thus far!
This would give large AIs a seemingly irresistible incentive to delegate computations to the smallest subsystems capable of handling them, to speed things up, much like our conscious mind has delegated the blink reflex to a small, fast and unconscious subsystem.
सहस्रयुगपर्यन्तमहर्यद्ब्रह्मणो विदु: ।
रात्रिं युगसहस्रान्तां तेऽहोरात्रविदो जना: ॥ १७ ॥
sahasra-yuga-paryantam
ahar yad brahmaṇo viduḥ
rātriṁ yuga-sahasrāntāṁ
te ’ho-rātra-vido janāḥ
By human calculation, a thousand ages taken together form the duration of Brahmā’s one day. And such also is the duration of his night.
What if the explanation of Brahmā’s one day and the thought process of a galaxy-sized AI are the same? What if the length of Brahmā’s day corresponds with the number of thoughts Brahmā has in a particular period of time?
For lack of a better phrase – THINK ABOUT IT:)