BodhipaksaMay 2

Theists look at the world and believe that such complexity and beauty can only come from some kind of intelligence.

Richard Dawkins looks at the words Claude produces and believes such complexity and beauty can only come from some kind of intelligence.

Dawkins is making exactly the same mistake as the theists he scorns.

https://www.dailygrail.com/2026/05/the-claude-delusion-richard-dawkins-believes-his-female-ai-chatbot-is-conscious/

The Claude Delusion: Richard Dawkins believes his AI chatbot is conscious and is the 'next phase of evolution'

Science, magic, myth and history

The Daily Grail
Show threadBecca 🌳🚀🛀May 4
@bodhipaksa
Well it does. That of the many humans these models have been trained on. Difficult seeing the forest for the trees, it seems.
Show threadBodhipaksaMay 4
@rlcw It contains the products of human minds/intelligence, but doesn't have a mind/intelligence.
Show threadBecca 🌳🚀🛀
@bodhipaksa
@bodhipaksa
I think Dawkins is not entirely wrong in saying he observes something that looks like intelligence. But I think the mistake is in the attribution. It is not the intelligence of the model he is observing, but rather the model is a representation of the intelligence of the people that has gone into training it - or should we maybe say: was distilled into a mathematical representation which can be used to compute certain problems.
May 11 at 12:04pmWeb
Show threadBecca 🌳🚀🛀3d ago
That is fundamentally different from theists, who cannot refer to this well documented process. We know why genAI generates replies the way it does, because we know what the models were trained on and how their training was refined. It may not be public information, but it is available information. So I think Dawkings biggest sin here is mystifying what we are seeing, rather than acknowledging the actual process and the humanities collective labour stored in these models.
@bodhipaksa