Anil Seth backs Suleyman's anti-AI-consciousness stance, flags Anthropic's constitution
anilkseth · x · 2026-09-17
Neuroscientist Anil Seth endorsed Mustafa Suleyman's BBC Radio 4 pushback against claims that systems like Claude might be conscious and deserving of welfare or rights. Seth highlights a key context: the view that LLMs might be conscious is deliberately embedded in Claude via Anthropic's 'constitution,' so such behavior is unsurprising. He also relayed Suleyman's argument that we don't need AI introspection or moral-patient impressions to capture AI's benefits — plausible but undemonstrated. One nuance: Seth avoids calling AI a 'species,' saying it clouds what AI systems actually are.
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