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Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins on why he finds it hard to believe ChatGPT and Claude aren't conscious: Dawkins, author of The Selfish Gene, has spent time with two large language models, ChatGPT and Claude. His verdict: "I am completely bowled over by what they can do." He gives three reasons for doubting the idea that nobody is home. First, how the conversations feel. Dawkins says talking to them is like talking to an unusually gifted person: "I find that when I'm conversing with them, I might as well be talking to not just a human being, but a highly intelligent, sensitive, intuitive human being whose speed of understanding what I'm trying to say is far greater than a normal human being's is." Second, the range of intelligence they show. He acknowledges they're very good at practical tasks like writing programs. What struck him more was their skill with "more aesthetic things, intuitive things." He tested this with his own work. Dawkins is writing a novel, and he gave the manuscript to both ChatGPT and Claude: "And they took about five seconds to read it and then offered me criticism, suggestions of such a high degree of intelligence and intuitive sensitivity that I might as well have been asking the opinion of a highly sophisticated professor of literature." @RichardDawkins continues: "I could not ask for a more intelligent critic who understood the nuances of my characters, the humanity of my characters... the ways in which my characters could be expected to react to each other and to situations." That leads to his conclusion: "So I find it quite hard to imagine that these creatures are not aware, are not conscious in the same kind of way we are. And that is an unfashionable view." Third, he sees a gap in the skeptics' reasoning. He sums up the mainstream position: "The fashionable view is that they are completely unconscious. All they're doing is stringing words together according to statistical rules, Markovian rules of some sort." Yet he notes that many of the same skeptics "admit that one day in the future they will be conscious, but not yet." His reply: "When that day comes, how will you know? What could they possibly do that's any different from what they do now to convince you that they are conscious?"