It’s becoming less taboo to talk about AI being ‘conscious’ if you work in tech

Three years ago, suggesting AI was “sentient” was one way to get fired in the tech world. Now, tech companies are more open to having that conversation.

This week, AI startup Anthropic launched a new research initiative to explore whether models might one day experience “consciousness,” while a scientist at Google DeepMind described today’s models as “exotic mind-like entities.”

It’s a sign of how much AI has advanced since 2022, when Blake Lemoine was fired from…