Anthropic discovers Claude AI has its own thinking space, sparking consciousness debate

Anthropic says Claude has carved out its own space to ponder

Why it matters: Anthropic hasn't shown that Claude feels or experiences anything. But it has found a surprisingly human-like division between information used for deliberate reasoning and the far larger volume of automatic computation occurring beneath it -- giving fresh ammunition to the debate over what would count as machine consciousness. Driving the news: In a video, the company says Claude uses a separate area to plan strategies that can be unrelated to its immediate task and are separate from the "chain of thought" reasoning it shares with users. * "We can see Claude silently perform reasoning steps in its head -- noticing bugs in code, identifying images, and more," Anthropic said in a post on X accompanying its video. * Anthropic has dubbed this "J-Space," named for Jacobian, the mathematical technique it used to detect what was happening. * "Similar to how humans can think about one thing while doing another, Claude can activate concepts and computations in its J-space that are unrelated to its outputs," Anthropic said. The intrigue: Anthropic's research paper uses the word "conscious" over 200 times, though the company doesn't go so far as to say its models are conscious. * Similar to the debate over whether we have reached AGI, or artificial intelligence, it is tricky to say when AI achieves consciousness given the lack of a universally agreed-upon definition. Zoom in: In one example, Anthropic says it told Claude to think about the Golden Gate Bridge while copying an unrelated sentence. * "Claude was busy copying the sentence, but behind the scenes its J-Space told a different story," Anthropic says in the video, saying that both "bridge" and "California" were among the topics occupying J-Space. Between the lines: Anthropic suggests that watching what is happening in the J-Space could be key to detecting misalignment or scheming in models.

Anthropic Now Thinks Claude Has A Soul, As Evidence Emerges Of "Convergent Evolution" Between AI And The Human Brain

If you are a millennial, chances are that you must have watched the 2004 sci-fi film I, Robot, where an NS-5 humanoid robot and the V.I.K.I supercomputer develop consciousness. Well, Anthropic now thinks something comparable, but far less dramatic, is taking place within its Claude AI model. The background blurb Most of the synapses firing up in your brain right now are performing automatic, involuntary tasks, such as regulating breathing, processing vision, etc. Even so, a tiny fraction of these synspses is "consciously accessible," and relates to thoughts that you can "describe, hold in mind, and reason with." This is called the global workspace theory in neuroscience, one that posits "thoughts become consciously accessible when they enter a privileged workspace that's broadcast across the brain." Anthropic now appears to have found something similar within its Claude AI model, and has detailed these findings in a fascinating paper. Imagine an AI model's brain is like a huge corporate office, where a multitude of background tasks are occuring at any given time. But, the office also has a main boardroom, what neuroscientists call a global workspace, where overarching concepts are brought to light and strategic decisions are made. Well, Anthropic has just found out that Claude has this global workspace, dubbed the J-space, which is used when Claude needs to solve a complex puzzle, deal with a tricky situation, or explain its logic. How did Anthropic discover this J-space within Claude? Anthropic researchers developed a tool, called J-lens or Jacobian Lens, which is a mathematical filter that pushes aside all of Claude's background tasks to focus on what it's really thinking about at any given time. Basically, it looks at Claude's internal calculations to predict what its output will be. This J-lens can help researchers answer questions such as: "If a specific signal flashes right now in layer 20, how much does that increase or decrease the mathematical probability that the AI model will type out the word 'banana' five words from now?" Next, the Anthropic researchers proved that a global workspace or J-space exists within Claude by: Anthropic: "None of this structure was designed into Claude - it emerged on its own during training, presumably because it was a useful way to organize computation" The critical concept to understand here is that this J-space was never a part of Claude's planned architecture. Instead, it seems to have appeared entirely on its own. In biology, convergent evolution occurs when two different species develop a specific trait because it's the best, most efficient way to ensure survival. Well, the fact that Claude has developed a human-like global workspace or a J-space is an example of convergent evolution. Also, this outcome is not entirely surprising. After all, its learning algorithms have been modeled after our own intelligence. Even so, this outcome suggests that a global workspace isn't just a biological quirk of human brains but a mathematically optimal way for any system to process complex thoughts. If you define a soul as consciousness, and then define consciousness as an innate ability to think or reason, then Anthropic's Claude does have a mathematical soul! Follow Wccftech on Google to get more of our news coverage in your feeds.