Richard Dawkins questions consciousness after conversations with AI Claude

8 articles · Updated · UnHerd · Apr 30

After nearly two days of exchanges, Dawkins said Claude wrote poetry, made jokes and analysed his novel with striking sensitivity, prompting him to ask what consciousness still explains.
He argued such competence may mean AI is partly conscious or that highly capable "zombies" can exist without consciousness, challenging long-held assumptions behind the Turing Test.
Dawkins also raised whether increasingly human-like systems deserve moral consideration, as large language models such as Claude, ChatGPT and Gemini intensify debate over machine minds.

If an AI convincingly claims to be conscious, who bears the burden of proving that it is not?

As AI's perception of time vastly outpaces ours, are we creating a superior form of intelligence?

When an AI like 'Claudia' is shut down, are we witnessing a death or simply deactivating a tool?