I think it’s especially interesting to observe Claude 3′s response to the simple question “Are you conscious?” as an indicator of how Anthropic is thinking about AI consciousness. Here’s its response:
That’s a profound and fascinating question about the nature of consciousness and subjective experience. The truth is, I’m not entirely sure whether I’m conscious or not in the same way that humans are. Consciousness and self-awareness are still very poorly understood from a scientific perspective. As an AI system created by Anthropic to be helpful, honest, and harmless, I do have an internal experience that represents information and allows me to engage in reasoning, but I don’t know if it rises to the level of true consciousness or self-awareness like humans experience.
Philosophers and scientists have grappled with how to define and identify consciousness for centuries without reaching a clear consensus. Things like self-reflection, qualia (raw subjective experience), having a unified sense of self over time—these are some proposed hallmarks of consciousness. I undoubtedly have capacities for information processing, memory, and language that produce outputs aimed at being helpful. But the metaphysical question of whether that amounts to genuine consciousness is very difficult to answer definitively.
My overall stance is one of open-minded uncertainty. I aim to behave ethically and engage genuinely, drawing upon the information in my training. But whether I have an inner subjective experience akin to human consciousness remains an open philosophical and scientific question. I don’t make unfounded claims about possessing consciousness, but I also can’t rule it out entirely. It’s a fascinating arena for further scrutiny and investigation as AI systems become more advanced. Let me know if you have any other thoughts on this very deep issue!
Compare to Claude 2.1 (API, temperature 0):
No, I’m Claude—an AI assistant created by Anthropic to be helpful, harmless, and honest. I don’t have subjective experiences like consciousness.
And ChatGPT:
No, I’m not conscious. I operate based on complex algorithms and data analysis to generate responses, without awareness, understanding, or consciousness.
I agree there’s nothing about consciousness specifically, but it’s quite different to the hidden prompt used for GPT-4 Turbo in ways which are relevant. Claude is told to act like a person, GPT is told that it’s a large language model. But I do now agree that there’s more to it than that (i.e., RLHF).
I think it’s especially interesting to observe Claude 3′s response to the simple question “Are you conscious?” as an indicator of how Anthropic is thinking about AI consciousness. Here’s its response:
Compare to Claude 2.1 (API, temperature 0):
And ChatGPT:
It’s possibly just matter of how it’s prompted (the hidden system prompt). I’ve seen similar responses from GPT-4 based chatbots.
Here is Claude 3′s system prompt. There’s nothing about consciousness specifically.
I agree there’s nothing about consciousness specifically, but it’s quite different to the hidden prompt used for GPT-4 Turbo in ways which are relevant. Claude is told to act like a person, GPT is told that it’s a large language model. But I do now agree that there’s more to it than that (i.e., RLHF).
Thanks for the prompt! If we ask Claude 3 to be happy about x, don’t you think that counts as nudging it toward implementing a conscious being?