The speaker is uncertain whether plants are conscious and suggests simulations may help investigate the question after consciousness is better understood.

“I don't know if plants are conscious. That's something that we might have to find out in simulations once we understand what consciousness is. But if consciousness is basically a pattern in the communication between cells that leads naturally to the emergence of an observer that stabilizes itself as an observer to make learning happen and perception happen and so on, then we have a hypothesis about what consciousness is in the biological organism.”