2025/07/10 by Kaichen Ouyang, Ouyang, Kaichen
Computer Science · Neuroscience · Physics and Astronomy · #Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI) #Disordered Systems and Neural Networks (cond-mat.dis-nn) #Embodied and Extended Cognition #FOS: Computer and information sciences #FOS: Physical sciences #Neural Networks and Reservoir Computing #Quantum many-body systems
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2507.08197
openalex publication_date 2025/07/10 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
This paper develops a neural jamming phase diagram that interprets the emergence of consciousness in large language models as a critical phenomenon in high-dimensional disordered systems.By establishing analogies with jamming transitions in granular matter and other complex systems, we identify three fundamental control parameters governing the phase behavior of neural networks: temperature, volume fraction, and stress.The theory provides a unified physical explanation for empirical scaling laws in artificial intelligence, demonstrating how computational cooling, density optimization, and noise reduction collectively drive systems toward a critical jamming surface where generalized intelligence emerges. Remarkably, the same thermodynamic principles that describe conventional jamming transitions appear to underlie the emergence of consciousness in neural networks, evidenced by shared critical signatures including divergent correlation lengths and scaling exponents.Our work explains neural language models' critical scaling through jamming physics, suggesting consciousness is a jamming phase that intrinsically connects knowledge components via long-range correlations.