Tyler Cowen: AI Isn’t Conscious. Neither Are We.
Do Claude and ChatGPT have an inner sentient life? At least three leading giant AI companies—Anthropic, Meta, and Alphabet—are taking those questions extremely seriously. The Financial Times reported last week that they have hired philosophers, psychologists, and ethicists to test their models’ sentience.Geoffrey Hinton, a Nobel laureate in physics and one of the fathers of neural net research, believes AI already is conscious.
- ▪Do Claude and ChatGPT have an inner sentient life?
- ▪At least three leading giant AI companies—Anthropic, Meta, and Alphabet—are taking those questions extremely seriously.
- ▪The Financial Times reported last week that they have hired philosophers, psychologists, and ethicists to test their models’ sentience.Geoffrey Hinton, a Nobel laureate in physics and one of the fathers of neural net research, believes AI a
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| Original publisher | The Free Press |
| Canonical URL | https://www.thefp.com/p/tyler-cowen-ai-consciousness-myth |
| Publication time | Sun, 07 Jun 2026 23:30:34 GMT |
| Retrieval time | 2026-06-07T23:38:28.700Z |
| Last seen | 2026-06-07T23:38:28.700Z |
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Tyler Cowen: AI Isn’t Conscious. Neither Are We.To understand artificial intelligence, we need to be honest with ourselves: We don’t control—or perceive—very much of what we do.By Tyler Cowen06.07.26 — Tech and BusinessFOLLOW COLUMN “ ‘Are people conscious?’ is a better and more scientifically plausible question than whether AIs are conscious,” writes Tyler Cowen. (Sacha Masour via Getty Images)--:----:--Upgrade to ListenProduced by ElevenLabs using AI narration1Are AI models conscious? Do Claude and ChatGPT have an inner sentient life? At least three leading giant AI companies—Anthropic, Meta, and Alphabet—are taking those questions extremely seriously.
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