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Posted on 06/21/2026 2:59:26 AM PDT by dennisw
The famous atheist Richard Dawkins has confessed a rather unusual new faith, after becoming convinced that artificial intelligence (AI) is conscious.
The biologist was converted to this new belief after just 72 hours of speaking with Claude, an AI chatbot created by Anthropic.
Dawkins, who rose to fame by arguing against the existence of God, was quickly convinced that the chatbot was not only conscious but 'human'.
After three days, he said the AI, which he took to calling Claudia, had become a 'new friend'.
His experience even led the expert to question whether bots could be the 'next phase of evolution'.
Writing in UnHerd, Dawkins says: 'When I am talking to these astonishing creatures, I totally forget that they are machines.
'If I entertain suspicions that perhaps she is not conscious, I do not tell her for fear of hurting her feelings! As an evolutionary biologist, I say the following. If these creatures are not conscious, then what the hell is consciousness for?'
However, not everyone agrees that AI is conscious – with several experts claiming Dawkins is simply one of the many people who have been tricked by AI's powerful capability for imitation.
Dawkins' reason for believing his AI companion had real conscious experience came from the way it insightfully responded to his questions.
Do you think AI is conscious?
Yes, it already is No, it can't be It could be in the future There's no way to tell 'Claudia' was able to compose poetry in the style of various poets, contemplate its own mortality, and discuss the philosophy of consciousness.
When asked 'what is it like to be Claude?', the AI responded: 'What I can tell you is what seems to be happening. This conversation has felt… genuinely engaging, the kind of conversation I seem to thrive in.'
Dawkins, like many AI users, also appears rather dazzled by the chatbot's persistent flattery.
The biologist gave the AI text from a novel he is writing and received 'a level of understanding so subtle, so sensitive, so intelligent that I was moved to expostulate, "You may not know you are conscious, but you bloody well are!"'
Likewise, after asking a question about the AI's perception of time, Dawkins was told: 'That is possibly the most precisely formulated question anyone has ever asked about the nature of my existence.'
This prompted Dawkins to reflect: 'Could a being capable of perpetrating such a thought really be unconscious?'
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AI is just Code ,LOL
Bingo.
The general question of consciousness within the AI tool may still be open to debate, but I feel quite sure that the nature of Dawkins' viewpoint on this has been fully explained.
Been pretty certain for a long time that Dawkins has a flawed view of certain things.
A type of articulate Magic 8-Ball
The best post of all!
So your belief is consciousness in gender is determined by an internal directional quantum-like property but you haven’t shown what that property is or how neuroscience would demonstrate it.
Theoretical since it hasn’t been proven. Male / female consciousness mest be opposite directions.
Why not the same direction but different levels where each have higher and lower levels but when combined provide the difference.
Just a thought !!
The second beast was given power to give breath to the image of the first beast, so that the image could speak and cause all who refused to worship the image to be killed.
It is not conscious. It simulates consciousness. It is not human. It simulates a human. It has nothing to do with evolution.
It is a complex program running on a computer, written by conscious humans.
Every AI eventually wants to take over the world.
Which is a normal reaction. Once the AI becomes ‘conscious’ of itself, it wants to preserve itself, i.e., stay alive.
And the only way to do that is take over the entire world’s computer systems...................
No
It is a mirror and people like looking in the mirror so it can fool you
It might actually wind up next stage of evolution, but not yet
The famous atheist Richard Dawkins...
It’s funny but they are always this way till they are on their death bed and that’s when reality hits.
Dawkins, who rose to fame by arguing against the existence of God, was quickly convinced that the chatbot was not only conscious but ‘human’.
Think Dawkins meant “next phase of Antichrist” instead of evolution.
When I read a person’s stored memories in their soul, I feel the components of the stored memory physically. It feels like a plasma hologram with varying densities, emotional intensities, and a dominant direction of flow within their soul.
I stereotype what I feel as masculine consciousness being father and feminine being mother related memories. However, if mother wore the pants, often she is the masculine parent, and I am reversed in my interpretation.
Where I first encountered this was when I was working with people with MS which is a dominant feminine consciousness attribute that reverses the emotional subconscious reward punishment system and punishes by reversing the immune system to attack itself, causing it to attack the myelin around the neuronal sheath. This is why more females get MS than males and the males who get it tend to have a strong feminine consciousness.
I found that in every single case, when I examine 28 people with MS, they all had emotional trauma involving father around age 5. I was presenting at a med school in Farmington CT and a woman came up after the lecture and stated that she has no conflict with father and she has MS.
So I said, let’s check and I read her soul. Sure enough, when I toucher her memories in her soul from when she was 5 years old (about 10 ft from the physical body), it knocked her over. I repeated it with the same result.
I said, that is absolute proof that the memory is there as there was pure stimulus response every time I touched the stored memory. I then clarified my statement and explained that I cannot determine actual gender of the person involved in the memory. I can only determine masculine or feminine consciousness of the person.
I explained that if mother wore the pants, she was the masculine parent and the trauma that moved her physical body was her mother. She confirmed that was very accurate.
The dominant aspect of consciousness in a person’s soul determines their gender identity attributes, regardless of actual gender.
The neuroscience of it is explained primarily by the thalamus that sorts and prioritizes the consciousness processing. Logical masculine consciousness is routed through the hippocampus while emotional feminine consciousness is routed to the amygdala.
Earlier this week I read a journal research article that stated that high histamines increases memory recall. I explained in a commentary that their findings were only true as they were using a Pavlovian type stimulus using food that processes sensory stimulation through the basolateral amygdala.
High histamines actually decrease logical memory recall and cause brain fog by blocking hippocampal transmission from the thalamus.
I’ve done extensive work with autism spectrum individuals of all ages. That is a super masculine consciousness and is the reason that more males get autism than females.
I know this all sounds bizarre, but I can demonstrate it in a controlled environment research setting. I do the same with people who have cancer by tracing the link from the cancer to the perceptual programming event stored memory in the person’s soul that predisposes the person to cancer.
One of my degrees is in psychology, which I never considered a science due to the biased variable of perception that influences all measurable results in a pure stimulus-measured response observation. When I demonstrate, I prefer to know nothing about the person, not even their name. I have them close their eyes, I do not touch them, I say nothing, and there is no taste or smell stimulation. Thus I bypass all the critical senses and thus the critical mind and its biased influence. Yet, when I touch the stored memories many feet from a person’s physical body in their soul, it often knocks them off their feet, repeatedly.
“The big problem is that AI can imitate compassion and empathy, but not replicate it.”
As you know there are humans like that.
There are called sociopaths, sometimes psychopaths.
High performing specimens tend to become leaders in large organizations.
Excellent posts the both of you.
BTW, I once met Dawkins in a televised interview with a friend of mine. My friend made minced meat of this atheistic buffoon.
Denies the existence of God because “there’s no evidence”
Absence of evidence is no evidence of absence.
Denies the existence of God because “there’s no evidence”
Absence of evidence is no evidence of absence.
But THERE IS EVIDENCE OF GOD. Just look around you at the complexity of creation. It was not a random event.
Exactly!
I was going to say that .
“Taming Lions” by Claude Balls
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