When you interact with a large language model (LLM) – one of the systems behind chatbots such as ChatGPT and Claude – it can feel as though you are in contact with another conscious mind. But are you, really?
Some prominent scientists, such as Geoff Hinton and Richard Dawkins, claim you are. But most experts remain sceptical, arguing that the impressive cognitive capacities of LLMs occur in the absence of consciousness.
Last week, researchers at Anthropic, the company behind Claude, waded into this debate with an interesting finding. They claim Claude has a normally invisible set of representations of information which guide its internal reasoning and its verbal output.
This is where it gets interesting. The researchers argue this finding can be understood in terms of an influential theory of consciousness called the global workspace theory.
What is the global workspace theory?
First proposed by the psychologist Bernard Baars in 1998 and further developed by the neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene and his collaborators, this theory holds that consciousness involves the activity of a “global workspace”. This is a kind of processing hub in the mind or brain that integrates and broadcasts information, allowing it to be used for reasoning, behaviour control, and speech.
In a glossy video explaining the work, Anthropic depicts the contents of Claude’s “global workspace” as sailing ships afloat on a vast sea of unconscious mental activity.
How should we react to these developments? Do they provide evidence for artificial consciousness? If so, how strong is that evidence?
What is a global workspace?
We can start by asking whether Claude does indeed have a “global workspace”. This is not straightforward, for the theory gives no formal definition of a global workspace.
The notion is characterised only informally. The (typically implicit) assumption is that any computational workspace “similar enough” to a human’s will qualify as a “global workspace”. But how similar is similar enough?
Claude’s workspace may indeed have much in common with ours, but there do appear to be differences.
For example, the brain’s workspace is sustained by recurrent loops – signals cycling back through the same circuits over time. In contrast, Claude’s workspace evolves over a single pass through the network.
A related difference concerns how representations enter a workspace. Advocates of global workspace theory have long argued that in humans, a process called “ignition” occurs in which a non-linear process amplifies and sustains neural representations, allowing them to enter the workspace. As far as we know, nothing comparable occurs in Claude’s case.
Do these differences matter? The answer is not clear. Global workspace theory is based on data drawn from adult humans. There are questions about how far the notion can be – or should be – extended.
Does a global workspace imply consciousness?
But let’s suppose Claude does have a global workspace. To figure out whether that would be evidence for Claude being conscious, we need to consider the status of the global workspace theory of consciousness.
There is no doubt it’s one of the most influential theories of consciousness, but it’s hardly uncontroversial among experts. (In a rather extreme understatement, Anthropic’s paper remarks that “the global workspace model is not universally accepted”.)
Many consciousness experts argue that computational properties alone are enough for consciousness. Even among those who think that consciousness is inherently computational, global workspace theory is only one of many options.
‘Conscious access’ and subjective experience
What’s more, there are questions about whether global workspace theory is really a theory of consciousness in the relevant sense at all.
In an influential paper on artificial consciousness, the neuroscientist Dehaene and his collaborators advance the theory as an account of what they call “conscious access” – the availability of information for recall, the voluntary control of behaviour, and verbal report. Crucially, they leave open the question of whether global workspace theory should be understood as an account of the subjective or experiential components of consciousness.
But if global workspace theory is just a theory of “conscious access”, then its implications for the artificial consciousness debate lose much of their significance. When we ask whether Claude is conscious, we don’t want to know whether it has “conscious access” – instead, we want to know whether there is anything, subjectively speaking, that it’s like to be Claude. Global workspace theory doesn’t speak to that question if we treat it as nothing more than an account of “conscious access”.
So has artificial consciousness arrived?
Even taking these complications into account, there is no doubt that Anthropic’s findings are noteworthy. Global workspace theory can be understood as a theory of subjective experience, and Claude may indeed turn out to have something akin to a “global workspace”.
None of this is evidence that artificial consciousness has arrived. But it’s not unreasonable to think these findings do move the dial – if only ever so slightly – in the artificial consciousness debate.
But if that’s right, then it’s puzzling why Anthropic is quite so upbeat about these developments. As Anthropic recognises, the creation of artificial consciousness would be a momentous event with wide-ranging social, ethical, political and legal ramifications.
If chatbots are conscious, then we would need to take their interests seriously. It would no longer be permissible to treat them as mere machines; instead, we would need to consider their welfare.
Should anyone even be trying to do this?
Anthropic remarks that “it’s time to start thinking about whether we should be building conscious machines”.
I agree we need to have that discussion, but we should also pause work on building machines that might potentially be conscious. If Anthropic were serious, it would surely down tools rather than plough ahead with its attempt to develop conscious AI.
A moratorium on AI research that might be thought to lead to conscious AI would, of course, be far from straightforward. There are questions about the range of research it would affect and who might enforce it. But if we don’t close the stable door now, we might find that the horse has already bolted.
- is a Professor of Philosophy, Monash University
- This article first appeared in The Conversation
