I would be interested to see a scientific discussion on what consciousness is biologically and if AI can fit that definition. But it would require someone with more credentials than a _media entrepreneur_ to pull off.
I would be interested to see a scientific discussion on what consciousness is biologically and if AI can fit that definition. But it would require someone with more credentials than a _media entrepreneur_ to pull off.
I personally think its moot to discuss whether LLMs are conscious. If they are, then we have diluted the definition to something that has no relevance to morality or concepts like life and death. Lets just take them for what they are, if we feel like they deserve to be treated with respect then we should (dont think anyone does yet).
And overhauling the language to match scientific understanding requires getting everyone onboard with that scientific understanding. Good luck with that, given that we have plenty of people who believe in weirdest nonsense.
Brain is not the only thing that makes us conscious, the whole human is a super-weird collection of highly intertwined systems that work together and produce whatever we call “human.” As I get it, it’s a huge complexity all the way down to that gut bacteria that somehow affects our thinking too. And I don’t think we have a vocabulary for all that - we mostly think of “self” as a single entity.
I'm not quite sure how you'd apply that to consciousness vs thinking say.
The article links to its source, but I'm not clicking on the archive.is link. It could well be to somebody else's blog.
The primary source is Dawkins' own article on Unherd.
https://unherd.com/2026/05/when-claudia-met-claudius/
That's actual news. Everything else is commentary.
Everyone just wants to attack whoever is in the spotlight at the moment, no matter who it is or what they are saying