[ExI] Richard Dawkins concludes AI is conscious

[Jason Resch]

On Wed, May 6, 2026, 8:59 AM John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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 do:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-SMVWgQFfImXNRRuuB9kQwhgxPLAwxYL


* 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.*
>

Right, and if you read the rest of my email you would have seen I confirm
exactly this point, behavior and intelligence are the only metrics we have
in judging the presence of a mind.

* 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. *
>

Right.

Note thet I was defending Dawkins against the "experts" that said he was
delusional.

Jason



>
>
>
>
>
>>
>> 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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