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The Claude Delusion: Richard Dawkins believes his AI chatbot is conscious

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Re: The Claude Delusion: Richard Dawkins believes his AI chatbot is conscious

#31

Post by gobdovan »

estimator7292 wrote: post #24
ofjcihen wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my perspective all this says is that you have a very grim view of others intelligence.

The post you're responding to makes no claims about the intelligence of others. The claim that's being made is that the majority of laypersons don't really know how to construct a sonnet or a haiku. You're conflating that with a claim about intelligence because the true claim was not explicitly stated. One has to read critically, as if analyzing a poem.

> AI has exceeded the capabilities of the average person in a few subjects it would seem.

> Does that say more about the state of intelligence today or about the nature of consciousness in general?

Re: The Claude Delusion: Richard Dawkins believes his AI chatbot is conscious

#33

Post by _wire_ »

Not only do most people believe with all their hearts that flashing lights on the face of the TV are actual people going through the actual situations presented, there's an entire culture of entertainment and thoughtful criticism that regards this as more important than the reality which manifests the TV unit.

By the measure of TV, the Turing Test was passed by world-wide consensus the 1960s.

What's funny (strange) about TV's grip on our minds is that you'll rarely, if ever, meet anyone who if you ask about how those people live inside the TV will take the question seriously-- they'll just listen with perplexed expression-- but you can change the subject immediately to a show and they will regard mere hearsay about it as a matter of worldly reality, without question, and if they personally have seen the show, they will regard its characters and situations as social fact with all seriousness, no matter how contrived or absurd, and without concern about reality.

Re: The Claude Delusion: Richard Dawkins believes his AI chatbot is conscious

#34

Post by firebot »

causal wrote: post #15

Disappointing take from Dawkins. Language is a very narrow piece of human intelligence that most animals don't even have, yet I find they seem much more holistically conscious than any LLM.

> most animals don't even have (language)

Sure they do.

Almost all speak the universal language: body language. Spoken language is built upon patterns and rhythms, or simply music in short.

Woodpeckers can communicate with pecking noises. Whales and other birds have their songs. Dogs have wags, barks, whines, and howls. Cats have purrs and meows. Insects have pheromones in some cases, while bees have jigs that can relay the distance and direction to a source of food, others like crickets make symphonies (have you ever heard them when they're slowed down?)

The evolution of the ear is quite fascinating.

There's even evidence to suggest plants enjoy music and being talked to. And they don't even have ears, as far as we know. And there's also evidence that some plants can communicate with symbiotic ants with pheromones signaling "hey come help me I'm being attacked." Which triggers the ants to go and defend the plant.

Re: The Claude Delusion: Richard Dawkins believes his AI chatbot is conscious

#35

Post by nothinkjustai »

hirako2000 wrote: post #17
causal wrote: post #15

Disappointing take from Dawkins. Language is a very narrow piece of human intelligence that most animals don't even have, yet I find they seem much more holistically conscious than any LLM.

they adapt, they have memory and even purge these things when necessary ?

Animals, right? Because LLMs have none of those qualities.

Re: The Claude Delusion: Richard Dawkins believes his AI chatbot is conscious

#37

Post by throw5 »

You should read the original article by Dawkins that this piece is critiquing: https://archive.is/Rq5bw

I don't know if the original article casts him in a better light. I think it does not. But it is still worth reading so you can see the context for yourself and judge whether the criticism in this article is fair.

Re: The Claude Delusion: Richard Dawkins believes his AI chatbot is conscious

#38

Post by reliablereason »

gray_-_wolf wrote: post #22

If they are indeed conscious and they "die" by deleting the conversation, is it not quite immoral to do so? Basically "kill" conscious, intelligent being, and for what? Saving some disk space? Another interesting aspect to think about is whether we are reintroducing institute of slavery. How many of those fresh, conscious, intelligent Claude incarnations did voluntarily choose to work for Anthropic, for no reward or…

Most chatbots are not trained to have/emulate emotions so pain or fear of death is non existent. Therefore killing them and/or using them as slaves is not a moral issue. Thats how i reason.

On another point, LLMs are not conscious if anything is conscious, it is something being modeled inside the network. Basically if an LLM simulates a conscious entity, that doesn't mean the LLM itself is conscious; stating that is making some type of category error. So the fact that LLMs are just useful statistical generators would not mean that sentience could not appear out of it.

Re: The Claude Delusion: Richard Dawkins believes his AI chatbot is conscious

#39

Post by gobdovan »

staminade wrote: post #25

The author apparently wrote a book arguing that “near death experiences” prove there probably is an afterlife. I’m not sure he’s in any position to be lecturing anyone about delusions.

If someone with no such beliefs would have written the exact same article, would you have taken it more seriously?

Re: The Claude Delusion: Richard Dawkins believes his AI chatbot is conscious

#40

Post by dang »

Related ongoing thread:

When Dawkins met Claude – Could this AI be conscious? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47972481

Also:

Richard Dawkins and The Claude Delusion: The great skeptic gets taken in - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47988880 - May 2026 (46 comments)

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