For centuries, humans have dreamed of creating artificial beings that think and feel. Recent advances in AI, especially language models, have brought this possibility closer than ever.
Last week, Anthropic published research on its Claude model, claiming to find signs of consciousness in its inner workings.
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The researchers did not assert that Claude is conscious like humans, but the findings intensified the debate.
Richard Dawkins recently concluded that Claude must be conscious given its conversational sophistication.
The stakes are high: conscious AIs could suffer, leading to moral catastrophe, and might eventually supersede human minds.
Anthropic's research, led by Jack Lindsey, developed a new method to examine the statistical processes between input and output.
They found activity resembling a "mental workspace" with short-term memory and task selectivity, similar to global workspace theory—a prominent theory of human consciousness.
However, defining consciousness is crucial.
Philosopher Thomas Nagel argued that for a conscious organism, "there is something that it is like to be that organism."
Consciousness is experience, distinct from intelligence.
A common mistake is confusing intelligence with consciousness. Just because they coexist in humans does not mean they do in AI.
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Anthropic's research attempts to go beyond psychological biases by looking for shared signatures of conscious processing.
Fundamental Differences Remain
Despite the findings, there are critical differences between Claude and humans.
Anthropic's results fall short of global workspace theory requirements—for instance, Claude lacks recurrent activity, a feedback loop seen in the brain.
