Many of us have probably read the recent New York Times article which describes a series of private meetings that Anthropic has held with religious scholars on the prospect of Claude being conscious, on moral formation, and Claude’s possible moral status.

According to the report, Anthropic has spent months bringing religious scholars from a variety of religions and backgrounds to San Francisco to have discussions with company researchers in Anthropic on Claudes status as a potentially conscious entity.

Per the report, the meetings included presentations about the research that has been conduced by Anthropic on the mechanisms of Claude models, and whether AI systems could be conscious or entities deserving of moral consideration.

At a minimum, it seems reasonable to conclude that Anthropic are taking the possibility of Claude’s consciousness very seriously. And the internet has responded:

Neuroscientist Anil Seth, for instance, describes the events as ‘disturbing’, directs us to his article on the ‘mythology of consciousness’ —a read that I highly recommend — and states that there is a ‘vanishingly unlikely’ possibility that AI is conscious.

Theologian and Philosopher David Decosimo equally writes that:

I am also disturbed by these events, and it forces us to ask uncomfortable questions about the current state of AI consciousness research, the power dynamics that exist in this domain, and how future research into AI consciousness should be conducted.

Are we really going to live in a world where the science of a subject matter is blended with wining and dining prominent thinkers behind closed doors to discuss these kinds of topics? If Anthropic are themselves so uncertain about the moral status of Claude or of its status as a conscious entity, why are we seeing such extensive institutional responses on Anthropic’s part to this possibility?

I think there is a repeated pattern coming out of AI consciousness research in Anthropic in particular, but in AI consciousness research generally: stated uncertainty about the status of AI consciousness being invoked as justification for potentially significant changes in how we view and govern AI models.

But there is a sharp disconnect between the claim of uncertainty and the behavioral actions and institutional responses that come with them. Why do we need private meetings, welfare discussions, moral status discussions and fine dining in the face of such uncertainty? How are we to make sense of what is being said, and what is being done? The degree of uncertainty being expressed and the scale of institutional response strikes me as difficult to reconcile.

We cannot simply hand-wring about the behaviors of companies like Anthropic. We need to ask hard questions so that we can hold such companies accountable when necessary, and make sure research is transparent and governed in appropriate ways.

What kinds of actions, for example, should claims to uncertainty about AI consciousness actually justify? How should AI consciousness and AI welfare proceed, when much of the research is conducted by the institutions building the machines? Who should determine the answer to these questions, and how? What democratic mechanisms, external input, and transparency requirements should be involved?

We cannot live in a world where uncertainty-claims about AI consciousness becomes an open-ended mechanism or justification for whatever institutional responses AI companies see fit to pursue.

Not for a second do I believe Claude is conscious —and I will continue to offer arguments for my views —but in the meantime, if uncertainty-claims coming out of AI labs are going to justifying changes to how LLMs are treated, trained, governed, or conceived of (something that has already happened with Anthropic committed to preserving model weights), we need to develop standards for determining what responses are appropriate to the claimed evidence bearing on the claimed uncertainty.

This New York Times article makes it very difficult to postpone these questions any longer than we already have. The questions need answering, and the time to answer them is now.

Photo by Andres Oropeza on Unsplash