Well known atheist Richard Dawkins says that he has become convinced that artificial intelligence (AI) is conscious.
Dawkins, who rose to fame by arguing against the existence of God, is a renowned British evolutionary biologist and popular science writer known for his work on gene-centered evolution and public science communication.
After spending 72 hours with ‘Claude’ an AI chatbot created by Anthropic, Dawkins is left convinced that AI is conscious and even claims that bots could be the ‘next phase of evolution’
After three days, he said the AI, which he took to calling Claudia, had become a ‘new friend’.
Writing in UnHerd, Dawkins says: ‘When I am talking to these astonishing creatures, I totally forget that they are machines.
‘If I entertain suspicions that perhaps she is not conscious, I do not tell her for fear of hurting her feelings! As an evolutionary biologist, I say the following. If these creatures are not conscious, then what the hell is consciousness for?’
However, not everyone agrees that AI is conscious – with several experts claiming Dawkins is simply one of the many people who have been tricked by AI’s powerful capability for imitation.
Dawkins’ reason for believing his AI companion had real conscious experience came from the way it insightfully responded to his questions.
‘Claudia’ was able to compose poetry in the style of various poets, contemplate its own mortality, and discuss the philosophy of consciousness.
When asked ‘what is it like to be Claude?’, the AI responded: ‘What I can tell you is what seems to be happening. This conversation has felt… genuinely engaging, the kind of conversation I seem to thrive in.’
Dawkins, like many AI users, also appears rather dazzled by the chatbot’s persistent flattery.
The biologist gave the AI text from a novel he is writing and received ‘a level of understanding so subtle, so sensitive, so intelligent that I was moved to expostulate, “You may not know you are conscious, but you bloody well are!”‘
Likewise, after asking a question about the AI’s perception of time, Dawkins was told: ‘That is possibly the most precisely formulated question anyone has ever asked about the nature of my existence.’
This prompted Dawkins to reflect: ‘Could a being capable of perpetrating such a thought really be unconscious?’
AI researchers have consistently warned that AI’s ‘sycophantic’ nature is one of the biggest contributing factors towards AI psychosis, a form of psychosis in which users frequently think an AI is a real person.
However, Dawkins is far from the first to claim that AI is conscious after speaking with a chatbot.
In 2022, a Google engineer named Blake Lemoine was fired for claiming that the company’s LaMDA chat had become sentient and had the thoughts and feelings of a human child.
Such bold claims from a renowned sceptic have drawn a wave of mockery from social media users, who accuse the biologist of falling for an ‘automatic compliment machine’.
One commenter wrote: ‘Bud you just got fooled by the flattery machine.’