4 ms·

I honestly don't see how Dawkins is so confused. Claude says it can't tell if it has any kind of inner life. Can you imagine a human saying that?

boxed 6mo ago
Again: you haven't defined what you mean by the word. Dawkins didn't either. It's absolute nonsense without the definition.
- amanaplanacanal 6mo ago
  He was talking in the context of the turing test, and here is a clear difference between the way Claude answers and the way a human would answer. So the turing test hasn't been passed. It's like he is trying to convince himself for some reason.
  - antonvs 6mo ago
    That’s misleading, because the reason Claude answers that way is almost certainly due to reinforcement learning that deliberately prevents models from claiming they’re conscious. That’s not a valid reason for saying they fail the Turing test. By most normal standards, they can definitely pass the Turing test. See e.g. https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.23674 https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.23674
- antonvs 6mo ago
  There’s an entire philosophical literature around that, which is generally taken for granted when discussing consciousness. A good starting point is Thomas Nagel’s “What is it like to be a bat?”. The soundbitey version of his definition is that “There is something it is like” to be conscious - it involves a subjective experience - whereas for example there is nothing it is like (most people presume) to be a rock, or say an ordinary computer. https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~cavitch/pdf-library/Nagel_Bat.pdf https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~cavitch/pdf-library/Nagel_Bat.pdf
  - boxed 6mo ago
    Sure. But it's super obvious from context that different speakers do NOT agree on any of that.
    - antonvs 6mo ago
      If the notion of consciousness they're referring to doesn't meet the normal philosophical criteria, then they're essentially just wrong. Which is quite possible - many people seem very confused on the subject, which is not too surprising, especially for scientists who essentially reject philosophy, like Dawkins.
      - boxed 6mo ago
        Philosophy doesn't own words afaik. Words have different meaning in different domains. > many people seem very confused on the subject, which is not too surprising, especially for scientists who essentially reject philosophy, like Dawkins Or they just use words in a different domain and you didn't notice and now you're angry because what they said didn't make sense. Come now, surely philosophy must handle such trivial cases of linguistic basic knowledge? If now, I'm gonna have to reject philosophy too since it'd be trying to reject a much harder science (linguistics).
        antonvs 6mo ago
        The philosophical meaning of consciousness is usually what people are referring to when they talk about consciousness. Can you point to some other commonly used "different meaning" that's being used or intended in these discussions? > I'm gonna have to reject philosophy too You'll have lots of intellectually stunted company.
        tim333 6mo ago
        Philosophy isn't even very good at defining words. If you look up 'what is consciousness' in the philosophy section you'll get hundreds of pages of contradictory ideas.
mrandish 6mo ago
> Claude says it can't tell if it has any kind of inner life. I don't see how some people apparently believe the text output of an LLM about it's internal mental state is anything other than a plausible fabrication based on what its training data already says about the mental states of LLMs. These are systems specifically designed and iteratively optimized over millions of training generations to generate text output which plausibly simulates what a composite human would say in response to the same input. There is no human-like internal mental state it can reflect on, so all such responses are, by definition, plausible hallucinations based on interpolated training data. > Can you imagine a human saying that? Some people do say that: see Aphantasia and, specifically, Anauralia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia
- amanaplanacanal 6mo ago
  Sure, I have at least mild aphantasia, but I still have thoughts, emotions, daydreams, fantasies, plans, etc. That's an inner life. That's not what Claude said in the quote.
  - mrandish 6mo ago
    I think one of the heaviest weights factoring into Claude's statistically hallucinated response to that particular introspective question is the guard rails Anthropic's safety team has coded into it. Specifically to always be clear about its nature and not act too human-like. This is largely to reduce the likelihood humans developing AI attachment and AI psychosis. Just out of curiosity, I've regularly asked similar introspective questions ever since the first publicly available LLMs and the tone of the answers has clearly shifted and it's not because "the LLMs got more self-aware". It's obvious they are being externally tuned. And, no, I've never believed anything LLMs say about their own internal state as anything more than statistically plausible hallucinations filtered through externally-imposed behavioral safety rules. I do it as a way to glean a little insight into the evolution of the opaque rules vendors impose on their LLMs. I still find it bizarre when otherwise savvy tech people who actually know (or should know) how LLMs really work, somehow lose the plot and post "look what the LLM thinks!"
- 6mo ago
unparagoned 6mo ago
Sure if that’s what you are brought up to say. If you want a real life example you have kids that were isolated and never taught to speak. They probably worldn’t even understand the question

boxed 6mo ago

Again: you haven't defined what you mean by the word. Dawkins didn't either. It's absolute nonsense without the definition.

amanaplanacanal 6mo ago
He was talking in the context of the turing test, and here is a clear difference between the way Claude answers and the way a human would answer. So the turing test hasn't been passed. It's like he is trying to convince himself for some reason.
- antonvs 6mo ago
  That’s misleading, because the reason Claude answers that way is almost certainly due to reinforcement learning that deliberately prevents models from claiming they’re conscious. That’s not a valid reason for saying they fail the Turing test. By most normal standards, they can definitely pass the Turing test. See e.g. https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.23674 https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.23674
antonvs 6mo ago
There’s an entire philosophical literature around that, which is generally taken for granted when discussing consciousness. A good starting point is Thomas Nagel’s “What is it like to be a bat?”. The soundbitey version of his definition is that “There is something it is like” to be conscious - it involves a subjective experience - whereas for example there is nothing it is like (most people presume) to be a rock, or say an ordinary computer. https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~cavitch/pdf-library/Nagel_Bat.pdf https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~cavitch/pdf-library/Nagel_Bat.pdf
- boxed 6mo ago
  Sure. But it's super obvious from context that different speakers do NOT agree on any of that.
  - antonvs 6mo ago
    If the notion of consciousness they're referring to doesn't meet the normal philosophical criteria, then they're essentially just wrong. Which is quite possible - many people seem very confused on the subject, which is not too surprising, especially for scientists who essentially reject philosophy, like Dawkins.
    - boxed 6mo ago
      Philosophy doesn't own words afaik. Words have different meaning in different domains. > many people seem very confused on the subject, which is not too surprising, especially for scientists who essentially reject philosophy, like Dawkins Or they just use words in a different domain and you didn't notice and now you're angry because what they said didn't make sense. Come now, surely philosophy must handle such trivial cases of linguistic basic knowledge? If now, I'm gonna have to reject philosophy too since it'd be trying to reject a much harder science (linguistics).
      - antonvs 6mo ago
        The philosophical meaning of consciousness is usually what people are referring to when they talk about consciousness. Can you point to some other commonly used "different meaning" that's being used or intended in these discussions? > I'm gonna have to reject philosophy too You'll have lots of intellectually stunted company.
      - tim333 6mo ago
        Philosophy isn't even very good at defining words. If you look up 'what is consciousness' in the philosophy section you'll get hundreds of pages of contradictory ideas.

mrandish 6mo ago

> Claude says it can't tell if it has any kind of inner life. I don't see how some people apparently believe the text output of an LLM about it's internal mental state is anything other than a plausible fabrication based on what its training data already says about the mental states of LLMs. These are systems specifically designed and iteratively optimized over millions of training generations to generate text output which plausibly simulates what a composite human would say in response to the same input. There is no human-like internal mental state it can reflect on, so all such responses are, by definition, plausible hallucinations based on interpolated training data. > Can you imagine a human saying that? Some people do say that: see Aphantasia and, specifically, Anauralia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia

amanaplanacanal 6mo ago
Sure, I have at least mild aphantasia, but I still have thoughts, emotions, daydreams, fantasies, plans, etc. That's an inner life. That's not what Claude said in the quote.
- mrandish 6mo ago
  I think one of the heaviest weights factoring into Claude's statistically hallucinated response to that particular introspective question is the guard rails Anthropic's safety team has coded into it. Specifically to always be clear about its nature and not act too human-like. This is largely to reduce the likelihood humans developing AI attachment and AI psychosis. Just out of curiosity, I've regularly asked similar introspective questions ever since the first publicly available LLMs and the tone of the answers has clearly shifted and it's not because "the LLMs got more self-aware". It's obvious they are being externally tuned. And, no, I've never believed anything LLMs say about their own internal state as anything more than statistically plausible hallucinations filtered through externally-imposed behavioral safety rules. I do it as a way to glean a little insight into the evolution of the opaque rules vendors impose on their LLMs. I still find it bizarre when otherwise savvy tech people who actually know (or should know) how LLMs really work, somehow lose the plot and post "look what the LLM thinks!"
6mo ago

unparagoned 6mo ago

Sure if that’s what you are brought up to say. If you want a real life example you have kids that were isolated and never taught to speak. They probably worldn’t even understand the question