Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“Richard Dawkins is currently the subject of much laughter and ridicule over his recent article for UnHerd admitting that a highly sycophantic chatbot had convinced him that it might be conscious. I’m seeing the question ‘How can you be confident that AIs aren’t conscious?’ pop up a lot in response to the controversy. Speaking for myself, I would say I am confident the chatbots aren’t conscious in the same way I’m confident the animatronics at Disneyland aren’t conscious. I know humans constructed them to mimic the behavior of a sentient person. We know this for a fact. Nobody’s pretending otherwise. I am infinitely more likely to believe an animal is conscious than that an LLM is, because nobody programmed them to respond to things like pain and social stimulus in ways that are similar to humans.” (05/07/26)
https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2026/05/07/a-few-more-thoughts-on-ai-and-consciousness/