The Claude Delusion: Richard Dawkins believes his AI chatbot is conscious
Key takeaways
- Dawkins is hardly alone in this view – many users of AI chatbots come to this conclusion, after having what appear to be long, intelligent back-and-forths with their chatbot of choice.
- Dawkins begins his essay by criticizing those who have moved the goalposts on the original Turing test for consciousness, suggesting that by the famous mathematician s measure AI easily clears that hurdle.
- Dawkins anecdote telling of a moment that helped convince him even fails to take this into account:
Dawkins is hardly alone in this view – many users of AI chatbots come to this conclusion, after having what appear to be long, intelligent back-and-forths with their chatbot of choice. But it still staggering to see someone of Dawkins intellectual standing not just saying it sure does feel like there s something there with some skepticism and caveats, but instead preaching for the existence of AI consciousness in a long article with the title Is AI the next phase of evolution? Claude appears to be conscious .
Dawkins begins his essay by criticizing those who have moved the goalposts on the original Turing test for consciousness, suggesting that by the famous mathematician s measure AI easily clears that hurdle. But, for me at least, those goalposts have had to be moved, because it s a very dated test – it doesn t envision computers that are so heavily powered by pure numbers that they could swallow all of human-produced recorded language in its various forms and then statistically reproduce the most likely words in any response, without actual understanding it (ie. AI being more a stochastic parrot than a conscious entity).
Dawkins anecdote telling of a moment that helped convince him even fails to take this into account: