[ExI] Richard Dawkins concludes AI is conscious

[John Clark]

On Wed, May 6, 2026 at 8:47 AM Jason Resch via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

*> The self proclaimed "experts" here are the blind leading the blind, as
> they have no fundamental theory of consciousness to point to that justifies
> their conclusions of what is or isn't conscious.*
>

*You don't have such a theory of consciousness either and yet (please
correct me if I'm wrong) I don't think you believe that solipsism is true,
you believe that your fellow human beings are conscious, but not when
they're sleeping or under anesthesia or dead because when they are in any
of those states they are not behaving intelligently. And being probably the
world's greatest expert on evolution Richard Dawkins realizes but Natural
Selection could never have produced consciousness, and it certainly has at
least once, unless consciousness was the inevitable byproduct of
intelligence because Natural Selection can't detect consciousness any
better than we can and Natural Selection can't select for something better
can't see. *

*John K Clark *






>
> Quote:
>> But Dawkins was also experiencing what many other chatbot users have
>> felt: the uncanny feeling when AIs write with such rich mimicry of
>> human voice that they seem to be like people.
>> “When I am talking to these astonishing creatures, I totally forget
>> that they are machines,” Dawkins said.
>> It is a conviction that has led to campaigns for AIs to be granted
>> moral rights. One in three people surveyed in 70 countries last year
>> said they had, at one point, believed their AI chatbot to be sentient
>> or conscious.
>> -------------------
>>
>> As AI improves towards AGI, it will be amazingly persuasive when
>> talking to humans.
>> Humans will be rushing to follow the AGI recommendations.
>> BillK
>>
>
> Yes that percentage is sure to increase, especially as they interact with
> embodied AIs, and move behind just texting with them.
>
> Jason
> __
>
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