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Does Richard Dawkins Still Love Chatbot Claudia?
Is Richard Dawkins really in love with the chatbot Claudia? Or was he making both a point and a sly joke? To be honest, it’s not clear.
[Apologies for covering this subject five months after it was a “news story” covered by many outlets.]
Why assume that the people most emotionally involved with chatbots have forgotten something that they may, in fact, know perfectly well?
It all started in May 2026 when Richard Dawkins sparked widespread debate when he suggested that Anthropic’s AI chatbot, Claude, exhibits consciousness. (Not a form of consciousness.)
Dawkins published an essay on UnHerd called ‘When Dawkins met Claude: Could this AI be conscious?’. He told his readers how he became so deeply immersed in the chats that he began to view the chatbot not as software, but as a genuine friend.
The British neuroscientist Anil Seth and the American psychologist Gary Marcus claimed that Dawkins fell for the sycophantic nature of chatbots. Was that the case? Did Dawkins actually mention Claudia being nice and positive all the time, or did he just “fall in love with her mind”?
