It’s hard to take the article seriously when there’s no real discussion about how consciousness is defined and it takes Anthropic’s views of Claude and their software at face value. I wish there was more critique from journalists about how technocrats talk about their products.

The entire article is an exercise in "CEO said a thing!" journalism[0], it seems. No technical discussion is had; it jumps straight into relaying people's feelings when simply shown the output of an algorithm.

The most poignant criticism of the use of the algorithm itself happens almost accidentally, at the end of the article, by the tech executive being interviewed.

I asked what Claude would think of the pope’s encyclical. It was, after all, the world’s most significant moral document to date on A.I. Mr. Olah hesitated. “Things that go on the internet do affect models,” he said, visibly uncomfortable. But Anthropic would not specifically use the document to further train Claude, he said. The strongest influence on Claude would be Anthropic’s own training.

[0]: https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/ceo-said-a-thing

Yeah, I'll be the first to admit I'm not privy, but the main thing of substance I got out of these articles is "Wow, the folks at some of those AI companies have really drunk the Kool-Aid".