Joscha Bach (born 1973) is a German cognitive scientist, AI researcher, and philosopher known for his work on cognitive architectures, artificial intelligence, mental representation, emotion, social modeling, multi-agent systems, and philosophy of mind. His research aims to bridge cognitive science and AI by studying how human intelligence and consciousness can be modeled computationally.

Bach was born in Weimar, East Germany, and displayed an early interest in philosophy, artificial intelligence, and cognitive science. He received an MA (computer science) from Humboldt University of Berlin in 2000 and a PhD (cognitive science) from Osnabrück University in 2006, where he conducted research on emotion modeling and artificial minds. His doctoral work focused on developing MicroPsi, a cognitive architecture designed to simulate human-like reasoning and decision-making processes.

After completing his PhD, Bach focused his research on cognitive architectures and theory of mind. He has held positions in both academic and industrial research, contributing to both theoretical and applied AI. His work frequently explores the boundaries of AI systems, questioning the limits of current machine learning technologies and addressing how future systems might achieve human level general intelligence.

Bach has worked in several prestigious institutions, including Martin Nowak's Harvard Program for Evolutionary Dynamics (PED). He has also held research positions at the MIT Media Lab and has served as a vice president of research at AI Foundation, where he has focused on developing AI systems capable of more sophisticated, human-like interactions.

A 2019 article in Science reported that Bach received funding from Jeffrey Epstein after Epstein's first conviction, citing a conference paper that includes a funding acknowledgement. In January 2020, a report published by Goodwin Procter following fact-finding efforts by MIT, outlined that Bach was hired to the Media Lab in part thanks to Epstein's donations to support Bach, claiming that donations done in November 2013 and in July and September 2014 totaled $300,000 (or 40% of Epstein’s post-conviction donations), corroborating these claims. In May 2020, Harvard released a report of their own fact-finding efforts, finding that Martin Nowak permitted Bach access to PED offices between 2014-2019, but that "Harvard never paid or received funds to support" Bach's research. The Harvard report also outlines that Bach was listed as a PED research scientist between 2014-2019, noting that two papers published after Bach's departure from MIT acknowledge support from Epstein and PED.

Joscha Bach's research is largely centered on cognitive architectures—computational models that attempt to replicate aspects of human cognition. His work includes:

Joscha Bach's concept of "Cyber Animism" proposes that consciousness may be a form of self-organizing software that exists not only in human brains but potentially in artificial systems and throughout nature. This idea revives ancient animist notions about spirits in nature but reinterprets them through a modern computational lens. Bach suggests that consciousness could be a kind of software running on our brains, and wonders if similar "programs" might exist in plants or even entire ecosystems. He draws parallels between the self-organizing principles observed in biology and the potential for similar processes to occur in artificial intelligence systems, leading to the emergence of consciousness. Bach argues that we should blur the lines between human, artificial, and natural intelligence, and believes that consciousness might be more widespread and interconnected than we ever thought possible. The concept also suggests that ancient concepts of 'spirits' may actually refer to self-organizing software agents, and that consciousness itself could be a simple training algorithm for such systems.

In this book, Bach outlines the foundational principles of synthetic cognition, discussing how cognitive architectures could be designed to replicate human thought processes.