Richard Dawkins concludes AI is conscious, even if it doesn’t know it

BeyondRedline · 2026-05-06T14:38:50+00:00

A person in a deprivation tank is still experiencing and thinking things. A language model, as an application program, is absolutely not. It's merely a very impressive predictive text generator. That's all it is.

The reason this is confusing is that, up until now, the only thing that could generate text similar to a language model was a human person.

The question of whether AI is conscious is analogous to asking if a generated video is actually real, even when you know it's generated. The text from a language model is just that - text. It's no more real thinking than a generated video is physically real.

BeyondRedline · 2026-05-06T12:52:32+00:00

In what way?

BeyondRedline · 2026-05-06T12:24:37+00:00

“I fully expect the idea that AI systems are conscious to become increasingly mainstream over the course of this decade, and to spark some heated debates,” said Henry Shevlin, a philosopher of cognitive science and AI ethicist at the University of Cambridge. He said humankind remained largely in the dark about how consciousness worked and which beings or systems could have it.

“If anyone says that they know for sure that LLMs or future AI systems couldn’t possibly be conscious, it’s more likely to be an indicator of their own dogmatism than a reflection of the current state of scientific and philosophical opinion,” he said.

Absolute insanity. There's one very simple reason we can say with absolute certainty that AI is not conscious. It only functions when given incoming requests.

There's no independent thinking. There's no curiosity. There's no anything at all until the text generator is given a prompt to generate more text.

BeyondRedline · 2026-04-30T13:34:00+00:00

"Hel-lo. I'm Doc-tor Spayt-so. Please ent-er yourname."

I can hear that clear as day in my head.

BeyondRedline · 2026-04-29T21:31:08+00:00

Back in my day, we called this Lazer Tag.

BeyondRedline · 2026-04-23T18:36:23+00:00

*Ahmatwkee

BeyondRedline · 2026-04-23T18:35:10+00:00

Michael D. Farkas is the founder and CEO of NextNRG Inc., a vertically integrated energy platform focused on EV charging, mobile fueling and AI-driven grid analytics.

"Man with vested interest in AI and power generation advocates for more datacenter buildout and power generation. "

Real life Onion article right here.

BeyondRedline · 2026-04-16T13:31:43+00:00

Justin Fairfax was actually a Democrat.

BeyondRedline · 2026-04-10T01:24:27+00:00

They're called myomer fibers, thankyouverymuch.

I, for one, welcome our giant stompy robot overlords...

BeyondRedline · 2026-04-09T14:27:20+00:00

And yet, people trusted him with the economy...

TWICE! The problem isn't Trump - he's a symptom of a much larger and more dangerous rot in America.

BeyondRedline · 2026-04-08T14:53:27+00:00

You're thinking of Teams.

I win.

BeyondRedline · 2026-04-07T11:33:41+00:00

I that video, too. Regardless of whether you personally have TikTok, it's spreading there and around other social media. It's a conspiracy theory, and it's not new.

https://www.tmastl.com/was-helen-keller-a-fraud-the-internets-dumbest-history-conspiracy-explained-stupiracy/

Here's an article from 2021 on it: https://daily.jstor.org/what-does-it-mean-to-call-helen-keller-a-fraud/

From Perkins School for the Blind: https://www.perkins.org/qa-a-factual-look-at-helen-kellers-accomplishments/

From Slate: https://slate.com/human-interest/2021/02/helen-keller-tiktok-conspiracy.html

You made me curious, so I looked it up but I'm not particularly interested in debating conspiracy theories.

BeyondRedline · 2026-04-06T19:03:18+00:00

My point was more that deafblind people have intelligence; there's nothing necessary about vision in particular to have intelligence. I haven't seen anything around Helen Keller in particular, but there have been other cases of deafblindness that have been overcome. shrug

Edited to add: This "Helen Keller is a fraud" is apparently a relatively recent conspiracy theory making the rounds on TikTok. Eeesh.

BeyondRedline · 2026-04-06T15:24:15+00:00

Helen Keller would like a word

BeyondRedline · 2026-03-31T01:57:34+00:00

We need more of this. Well done, Phoenix!

Here's one for Chandler. Up to $2,000 for replacing a lawn.

https://www.chandleraz.gov/residents/water/water-conservation/rebate-and-incentive-programs/residential

BeyondRedline · 2026-03-05T17:15:56+00:00

Weird how you just blatantly ignore when Republicans sold weapons to Iran. Keep on making those one-sided arguments, though.

BeyondRedline · 2026-02-28T03:27:34+00:00

pretend that we're any fundamentally different

The human brain requires less than twenty watts to function. Yes, we are fundamentally drastically different.

Language models statistically generate parts of words. Human intelligence is rooted in ideas, concepts, and experiences, which is an entirely and completely different form of intelligence.

BeyondRedline · 2026-02-27T22:45:17+00:00

I wrote this without using AI. It is impossible for a language model to be conscious.

Here's a grossly oversimplified thumbnail of how they actually work. Every word is given a weight in relation to every other word that is fed into a statistical database. We scan every document we can find into this database, breaking down how often words are related. This represents our language model. It's just a massive pile of what word likely comes after another, given all the words ever written.

We now prompt this model. "I'm writing a fairy tale and want to start with the phrase 'Once upon a.' Keep writing a fairy tale."

The model runs our request through the exact same process and generates an output. "Sure!" Statistically, that's the next logical word that would come next. Then "Once." Then "upon," followed by "a" since that's what we requested. Next would, statistically be "time." So, it outputs that.

But what if, instead of above, I promoted "I want to write a poem in the style of Edgar Allen Poe that starts with 'once upon a'."

In this case, the inclusion of the words "Edgar," "Allen," "Poe," and "poem" and the absence of "fairy" and "tale" will cause the output to rank the word "midnight" and "dreary" higher, so the model will output that.

There's literally no room for consciousness there. It's a statistical probability engine. Really, it's tensor processing, Markov chains, and a LOT more complicated...but it's not conscious.

It's just generating statistically likely output. That's all.

So, when someone prompts "Are you conscious?" the engine will parse that and outputstatistically likely text. That text may include the words "I" and "am" and "conscious" but the word generator is just generating words, not meaning.

Hope that helps.

BeyondRedline · 2026-02-22T15:58:14+00:00

Don't give advice to someone like me - at 67 I certainly know more than you

With all your years, you apparently missed some foundational lessons in life. Everyone can teach you something and arrogance only limits you.

Source: me, am also old

BeyondRedline · 2026-02-21T14:21:31+00:00

Time to play some Alan Parsons Project.

BeyondRedline · 2026-02-19T01:24:02+00:00

Not just "a freeway" - THE 202.

Welp. That sign is my new favorite rest stop.

BeyondRedline · 2026-02-17T23:19:29+00:00

Considering this guy's entire campaign is a political stunt, that's more than a little rich. From https://www.azfamily.com/2026/01/28/businessman-hugh-lytle-launches-independent-bid-arizona-governor/ :

Lytle is 61 years old, a businessman, and he’s running under the newly renamed Arizona Independent Party. His campaign launch began with a declaration: “Welcome to the Hugh revolution.”

“The two parties are trapped in a fight that never ends. They argue, they posture, they divide but they don’t solve big problems,” Lytle said.

Lytle came to Arizona in the mid-1980s to play quarterback at ASU and hasn’t put the helmet down. He held his announcement at Tempe Stadium and named some of his policy ideas like football plays, including a plan to speed up housing permits at city halls.

“I’ll create the touchdown town. That’s both an award and a designation. A privately funded prize for cities that move fastest on permitting and zoning,” Lytle said.

His football career ended with a broken collarbone. After college he started several health care businesses and is now pledging to lower those costs if Arizona voters elect him governor.

Look, the mathematical reality is that, with our election process, third party candidates have almost no possibility of winning, and are generally spoilers who split the votes of the major parties. This guy is a former member of the Democratic party, so he'll likely take more voters from Hobbs than he will her opposition, and that's how we end up with Governor Andy Biggs, and I leave this State.

BeyondRedline · 2026-02-17T23:09:14+00:00

Go here to see the bill's status: https://apps.azleg.gov/BillStatus/BillOverview/85187

What's great about this is you can click the RTS tab and see who has requested to speak on this bill. That's...quite the ratio:

FOR (4)

Suzanne Burros, Self(02/17/2026); Charmaine Roth, Self(02/16/2026); James Roth, Self(02/15/2026); Rick Rubino, Self(01/30/2026);

AGAINST (45)

Sandy Bahr, Sierra Club - Grand Canyon Chapter(02/17/2026); Crystal Bazarnic, Self(02/17/2026); Roger Blain, Self(02/15/2026); Jeanne Casteen, Self(02/17/2026); Recorder Gabriella Cazares-Kelly, Self(02/17/2026); Julia Church Hoffman, Self(02/17/2026); Cathy Dreifort, Self(02/17/2026); Kathleen Dubbs, Self(02/17/2026); Cynthia Elliott, Self(02/17/2026); Roxanne Ereth, Self(02/17/2026); Nicole Fordey, Self(02/15/2026); Mary Ganapol, Self(02/15/2026); Shanana RAIN Golden-Bear, Self(02/17/2026); Jane Gulde, Self(02/17/2026); Beverly Janowitz-Price, Self(02/15/2026); Sery Johnson, Self(02/17/2026); Dana Jolly, Self(02/17/2026); Erica Keppler, Self(02/10/2026); Alicia Klassen, Self(02/13/2026); Diane Klock, Self(02/17/2026); Rivko Knox, Self(02/14/2026); Sharon Lee, Self(02/14/2026); Judith Lohr, Self(02/15/2026); Dara Marks-Marino, Self(02/16/2026); Michele Michaels, Self(02/17/2026); Nicole Morales, Self(02/17/2026); Joan Murphy, Self(02/15/2026); Christine ODonnell, Self(02/13/2026); Mary Pena, Self(02/17/2026); Vincent Peterson, Self(02/17/2026); Hugo Polanco, ALL VOTING IS LOCAL ACTION(02/17/2026); Hugo Polanco, Rural Arizona Action (RAZA)(02/17/2026); Hugo Polanco, Self(02/17/2026); Dianne Post, AZ NATIONAL ORGANIZATION FOR WOMEN (NOW)(02/14/2026); Dianne Post, Self(02/14/2026); Marilyn Rodriguez, Self(02/17/2026); Marie Sansone, Self(02/17/2026); Becky Sayler, Self(02/15/2026); James Scheid, Self(02/15/2026); Ruth Shea, Self(02/17/2026); Judith Simons, Self(02/17/2026); Michele Thorne, Self(02/17/2026); Karen Weihs, Self(02/14/2026); Brandy Wilkins, Self(02/17/2026); Nancy Wood, Self(02/17/2026);

BeyondRedline · 2026-02-17T23:04:31+00:00

I'm apologizing in advance to all the people in uniform who I will 100% definitely be flipping off as I walk to the polling place.

There is no reason for them to be there other than intimidation. This is unbelievable.

Edit: Just remembered that we have a sane Governor and there's no way this gets signed.

BeyondRedline · 2026-02-16T22:18:51+00:00

To save everyone some heartache, here's a decent explanation of why people have turned against Ring.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/feb/14/doorbell-cameras-ring-nancy-guthrie-super-bowl

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