By https://www.abc.net.au/news/alan-kohler/167112
Publication Date: 2026-05-06 18:46:00
Richard Dawkins, the well-known evolutionary biologist, atheist and author, recently wrote an article in which he concluded that Claude AI is conscious (he calls her Claudia).
The reaction to this was intense, mostly negative, that he was conflating intelligence with consciousness and that no AI, including Claude, is “conscious.”
Gary Marcus, a scientist and prolific author on AI, was typical: “The fundamental problem is that Dawkins doesn’t think about how these results were generated. Claude’s results are the product of a form of imitation rather than an account of real internal states.”
Neuroscientist Anil Seth gave a TED talk in which he said that we see consciousness in AI in the same way we see faces in clouds.
That’s all fine, but what this discussion misses is that these things are corporate products designed to make money. That’s it.
The argument about whether Claude or any other LLM is conscious is interesting but beside the point.
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