Richard Dawkins has said chatbots should be considered conscious (source paywalled; alternative source) after spending two days interacting with the Claude AI engine.

I can't believe someone like Dawkins would fall for anthropomorphizing AI chatbots... unless he's using a different definition of consciousness, which is fair.

So, we have to start there: what does "being conscious" mean, for this scenario, and for Dawkins while evaluating this scenario?

Seems like a rather subjective and emotionally charged perspective. Nothing wrong with that so long as we recognize (and he recognizes) it for what it is.

With that said, this is a conversation worth having... within certain parameters (tbd)

Words detected. Useful signal missing.

I tend to agree with the spirit of such comments, but in this case, Apple makes it clear in the TOS that it retains the right to disclose that information if it deems it appropriate. People pay for an anonymity service without reading the fine print :/

No. We saw a marked decrease in crime rates, starting around the 90s (a generation after the ban on leaded gas started)

For a country of Iran's size, its economy and public services can ill-afford this type of mass disruption - This is a "soft" Doomsday Device, except it is not soft at all.

That doesn't look like an unrecoverable error, but as a data point. After all, this was an experiment, and a failure in an experiment is always a valuable data point.

As I said, citations needed. Moreover, given you opted to mention Harvard, citations needed to demonstrate that whatever you alleged happened in Harvard (if it did) is also applicable across the other entities you intend to accuse.

Pete Hegseth stares at you in Moron-lingo. Stop projecting.

No one does. That's just bs mediocre people parrot to themselves.

Citations needed.

And that was exactly Motorola's undoing, also.

Well, of course. Environmental and anti-trust regulation and workers' protection laws, and all that stuff gets in the way... and let us ignore the cost of living (which is a much larger reason why it is not economically viable to create some stuff without subsidies.)

this, precisely

Except we don't have total economic collapse every 5 to 10 years. Think carefully what you think "total economic collapse" means.

I've been through downturns (the dot-com, the great recession and contract freezes during the 2013 government shutdown.) But none of them were total collapse.

PS. We will all experience an economic shit show once in our lives, and yes, we can adapt. And if we are wise, we can learn to prepare (and perhaps even better, elect politicians that work with the private sector to prevent such things from hammering the little guys.)

You just don't create X number of jobs out of thin air. Do we have a demand?

Don't get me wrong, I think we need to focus more on trade/vocational education. But this is not a zero-sum game. All jobs, and all forms of education are complimentary so long as they match demand.

The OP can't. This is the thing. Some of these folks have never set foot in academia, or would have never had made it to, say, Harvard on merit.

But they sure know about "indoctrination in collage(sic)".

I spent 10 years in college, and I can only count 2 instructors that were into that kind of behavior (one from the left, and one from the right.)

Every other professor I had was simply trying to do their job. A few sucked, some had terrible personalities, but hey, we are all human. Everybody else did their job, and I thank them for it. Some of them became my mentors who helped me get through my education. Some were even counselors that got me through some dark moments (because college is challenging, specially in STEM fields.)

So I ask, just like you, what indoctrination are these fools talking about?