While the post is cringe inducing and dawkins is an ass, he doesn’t quite say that claude is sentient. More that the ways we use to define it are all basically met by an llm. And argues that we need a better way to define it.
It’s pretty simple, what’s the LLM thinking about when it’s not actively being prompted?
Does an LLM have the same “consciousness” when talking to someone else? Does the LLM even exist if it’s not actively being talked to? If everyone just stops talking to it, does it “die” until someone else logs in and submits a prompt?
While the post is cringe inducing and dawkins is an ass, he doesn’t quite say that claude is sentient. More that the ways we use to define it are all basically met by an llm. And argues that we need a better way to define it.
Basically arguing about a philisophical zombie
https://unherd.com/2026/04/is-ai-the-next-phase-of-evolution/#comment-1031777
(paywalled, but can be mitigated by the firefox reader mode, for example)
It’s pretty simple, what’s the LLM thinking about when it’s not actively being prompted?
Does an LLM have the same “consciousness” when talking to someone else? Does the LLM even exist if it’s not actively being talked to? If everyone just stops talking to it, does it “die” until someone else logs in and submits a prompt?