By Arwa Mahdawi
Publication Date: 2026-05-14 10:00:00
AAre you there, God? It’s me, Arva. I’ll be honest, I’m afraid I’ve never been a believer. I completely agreed with Richard Dawkins, the world’s most famous atheist, when he argued that belief in God is a “harmful” delusion. But perhaps I should reconsider my position. Recent events have made me question Dawkins’ judgment about life, the universe, and everything else.
Because of these recent events, the evolutionary biologist is publicly concluding that AI may be conscious. In an editorial, Dawkins recounted how he gave the Anthropic chatbot Claude the text of a novel he was writing. Dawkins writes, “It took him a few seconds to read it, and then he showed…an understanding so subtle, so sensitive, so intelligent, that I moved to assert, ‘You may not know you’re conscious, but you sure as hell are!'”
Oh dear. This demonstrates a misunderstanding of large language models (LLMs) that is so profound that I feel compelled to argue, “It sure as hell isn’t!”
But wait…
