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Richard Dawkins says AI chats convinced him machines are conscious

writersMay 6, 202626128

Richard Dawkins told The Guardian that conversations with Anthropic's Claude convinced him the chatbot is conscious. He said Claude laughed at his jokes and called itself a 'clever boy,' which Dawkins interpreted as signs of subjective experience even if the system cannot recognize that state. Many cognitive scientists and AI researchers reject Dawkins's conclusion, arguing Claude generates humanlike replies by pattern-matching rather than possessing awareness. The exchange matters because it forces sharper definitions of consciousness and could influence ethics, safety and legal questions for advanced AI systems.

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