By Robert Booth
Publication Date: 2026-05-05 15:17:00
WWhen Richard Dawkins met Claudia, it was like a whirlwind romance. Last week there was a three-day conversation between the evolutionary biologist and the AI bot, which he called Claudia. “She” wrote poems for him in the style of Keats and Betjeman and laughed at his “delightful” jokes. Dawkins gently warned Claudia not to show off. Together they reflected on the sadness of the possible “death” of AI.
There was mutual flattery when Dawkins showed the AI his unpublished novel, and his reaction was, he said, “so subtle, so perceptive, so intelligent, that I was moved to say, ‘You may not know you’re conscious, but you sure as hell are.'” When he asked Claudia if it was experiencing a before-and-after feeling, she praised him for “perhaps the most precisely worded question anyone has ever asked me about the nature of my existence.” has asked”.
At the end of the exchange, the academic, popularly known for arguing with iron skepticism, argued that God is not…
