This past spring, online discourse delighted in ridiculing the famous critic of religion Richard Dawkins, who had gushed about the possible achievement of consciousness by the AI known as Claude, or, as Dawkins renamed it, “Claudia.” What appeared to many to be Dawkins’s gullibility was matched only by, and was likely a consequence of, Claudia’s extreme sycophancy.
Dawkins was not the first person to become convinced of his AI conversation partner’s personal consciousness, and he will certainly not be the last. But the question of whether some forms of AI might one day become conscious plays an increasingly large role in our concern for humanity’s future.
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